The meeting has now been successfully conceptualized, planned, and executed. But how does one know if the goal of the meeting has been achieved or if it has left a positive impression on attendees? It is through the process of feedback and analysis.
Whether they are compliments or brickbats, feedback can help steer future meetings in the right direction by improving the process as well as strategy.
Effective channels to gather feedback
The number of meetings at events runs to large numbers, sometimes into the 1000s depending on the size of the event. Most attendees are usually a part of multiple meetings and even back-to-back sessions. Therefore, it is not practical to stop each attendee and ask for their feedback, regardless of how few or many the number of questions are.
Post-meeting surveys are an effective channel that can be leveraged for feedback. The questions asked will vary but generally revolve around the productivity of the meeting, the effectiveness of the location/technology used if any, networking opportunities, goal achievement, and so on.
Common questions to ask would be –
- Was the meeting productive to your goals?
- Were you able to adequately understand the presentation?
- Did you get any opportunities to network?
- What is your takeaway from this meeting?
- What could be organized better?
Surveys can be sent either through email, an app or platform, for eg., a Meeting Automation Platform. An in-app survey can be used to gather feedback by procuring answers to a simple questionnaire.
Gathering information from a survey or sending emails after might be a tiresome task especially if done manually. Relying on spreadsheets or manually collating answers can also result in errors. However, using a Meeting Automation Platform (MAP) can simplify tasks by allowing managers to populate their own survey to the platform and sending it to all attendees through the same. Additionally, these surveys can also be customized for each meeting making it easier to gather relevant feedback. These surveys are therefore devoid of errors and are a lot more effective.
Analyzing a Meeting
Meetings are data-driven art. To understand if a meeting is a success or not, it needs to be measured and analyzed. Metrics can help one piece together important data from the meeting long after it has concluded in order to gauge results.
Metrics and analytics are tools that increase organizational transparency. Understanding and recording crucial meeting metrics depict the outcome of marketing efforts. Meeting analytics is on the rise today as it provides deeper insights and also helps project ROI. Data captured during a meeting will help predict the success of the meeting and also future trends.
Majority of meeting managers collate data from spreadsheets and since these spreadsheets are ill-maintained, it can be a challenge as most of the data might get misplaced. Therefore, what they are left with is either incomplete or no data making it hard to analyze the session.
The solution, therefore, would be to embrace a Meeting Automation Platform, an intuitive, state-of-the-line, cloud-based, SaaS technology platform that tracks meeting metrics through comprehensive dashboards, provides an illustrative data, and can generate standard and custom reports while establishing the impact of meetings on event ROI. Analyzing meetings have ever been easier.
And that concludes our #PerfectMeetings series! We hope these blogs were able to provide you with a deeper understanding of meetings and their process right from crafting a perfect agenda, ensuring the participation of right attendees, the impact of parking lots and Q&A sessions, the importance of meeting summary and follow-up meetings, and lastly feedback and analytics.
In addition to managing all workflows associated with pre-meeting scheduling, in-meeting management, and post-meeting analytics, Meeting Automation Platforms have a whole host of other benefits, as illustrated above.
Remember, more strategic meetings mean more revenue. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how you can accelerate your business growth and maximize event ROI.
