Surveys have become an integral part of the event management process. Some event planners choose to use hard copies that attendees fill in manually. Others employ online software to get the job done more efficiently. Either way, surveys provide critical research data on potential areas of improvement. This helps you gain a better understanding of attendees’ venue preferences, event highlights, contact collections, and other engagement patterns; this all comes in handy when planning your next event. However, while formulating surveys, it is vital to determine the frequency of use of attendees. So how exactly should you go about this?
There are two ways to tackle the question of frequency of use. The first is to analyse your transactional data and create a suitable measure, such as the average number of visits in the last week, month, year etc. While this provides a reliable benchmark, it does not allow you assess the attitudes behind those behaviours.
Alternatively, you can ask your survey respondents how frequently they have visited a website or eaten at a restaurant. The advantage of this approach is that it allows you to tie this frequency to other variables of interest, such as performance on key service factors or money spent. However, there is a caveat – the further back you ask respondents to recall something, the less reliable their answer will be.
Assuming we want to ask patrons of Big Moe’s Diner in Wembley how frequently they visit the restaurant, there are two ways to pose the question.
Option one:
How frequently do you eat at Big Moe’s?
- Very infrequently
- Somewhat infrequently
- Occasionally
- Somewhat frequently
- Very frequently
Option two:
In the last 30 days how often have you eaten at Big Moe’s?
(Hint: Option two is better!)
Either of these approaches will yield workable data. However, the first option, with its scaled approach, is limiting in that we do not know what the exact differences are between categories. This alone makes it less actionable. The second question can be presented as either open-ended or scaled (e.g. none, 1 –2 times, 3 – 5 times, etc.). Open-ended will provide numerical data, scaled will provide ordinal data. Either of these is superior to option one.
Capturing frequency of use in your customer satisfaction survey allows marketers to establish a workable benchmark. For example, in analysis we would check to see if there are differences in average amount spent by frequency of usage category. These measures can provide actionable areas for improvement. Again an example, if you know that moving average usage from one time per week to two times will increase revenue by the average amount of the bill, this provides a realistic target to work toward.
Business events are becoming bigger and more complicated than before. Manual processes no longer measure up to the standard required for an efficient event management process. Apart from online survey software and registration solutions, mobile apps have quickly become a hot favourite with event organisers, as they allow for the creation of more personalised events. Download Cvent’s Mobile Event App Benchmark Report to learn how leading industry players have leveraged the power of mobile to achieve high adoption and engagement rates!
