One trick to keeping forms short is to only include the most impactful questions. For example, don’t ask them what their name and email is, you already have that information! If you’re wondering what other questions make an impact, read on to the next section…
2. Segmenting feedback
Every student is different. Every event is different. So if you’re looking for real insight and steer on effective action, lumping every bit of feedback into one pile isn’t the best strategy.
Counter intuitively; it helps to think of how you’d like to segment your feedback before you even ask it. Reverse engineering it in a way. To do this, you need to know who your students are and what they did, before even constructing your feedback form.
For example, if you have student athletes visiting, you’ll care much more about their views on your athletics facilities, sessions and other offerings. Of course they’ll still need accommodation just like everyone else but the focus of the feedback could be on something only a sub-section of your visitors can provide valuable insight on. But just defining these segments won’t get you the really powerful insight you’re after. To get the detail that really matters, you need to drill down into athletics-specific questions such as ‘how has coach Smith’s presentation influenced how you think about your future at our school?’ Questions of this granularity help you get to the real issues or assets of an event. Coach Smith’s presentation might be costly to put on and poorly attended but drives the majority of its attendees to enroll. By getting feedback on particular sessions, you could take those learnings and apply them to other, under-performing sessions in the event calendar.
Athletics is of course, only one segment. There are many other valuable segments to consider. For example, students who have already been admitted to your school, those wanting to study within a particular faculty or students who are visiting from abroad.
Across all these segments and all event types, there are probably only a handful of questions that are relevant to everyone. This means you really need to dig into the details. Feedback from each segment will differ but that’s fine! It may be a little bit more work for you but it’s worth it in the end as you’re much more likely to get feedback that triggers more appropriate and valuable action.
3. Actioning feedback
Let’s get bad feedback out the way first. If you get some less than positive responses, make sure you escalate it. Quickly. If you uncover something that is really off putting for a segment, you can immediately improve the next group’s experience by addressing it quickly.
Make sure you carve out time to review feedback when it’s quieter and you have the headspace to properly review the implications of what is being said by visitors. Also, involve multiple teams, including the faculty etc. They’ll have great insight into faculty-specific sessions and can pinpoint some of the more specific feedback segments of students might have.