Drawing on decades of psychological research and data from 96,000,000 responses across 550 organizations, we identified 5 key practices for trainers, speakers, evaluators and survey practitioners:

1. Timing - ask key questions BEFORE your event
2. Frequency - generate huge WIIFM for your attendees
3. Closing-the-Loop - prove their voice was heard and show how they compare to others
4. Internal Incentives - using (free) feedback
5. Sharing results with non-responders - the "oops method" to increase response rates

 
A methodology called "Survey Conversation" combines these 5 practices into a Win-Win for all parties:

1. For hosts, trainers and speakers, it invariably results in higher engagement and audience satisfaction;
2. For attendees, it creates a far more memorable and impactful experience at virtual/in-person events;
3. For those who evaluate and gather feedback from learning events, it maximizes response rate and generates more accurate and actionable results.

 
We will describe each key practice, provide specific examples from a wide variety of clients (cruise lines, universities, telecoms, membership organizations, digital marketers, utilities) and show how to apply Survey Conversations to your own educational or sales webinars, training events, masterminds, and conferences.

Matthew Champagne, Ph.D. is Director of Engagement and Retention at Embedded Assessments and the leading authority on using survey conversations to retain employees and high-spending customers. With 32 years of experience as a researcher, university professor, CEO, and Chief Learning Officer, his methodology for maximizing responses and generating deep customer insights has been deployed in 325 organizations. Named “Technology Visionary” by SURVEY Magazine, Dr. Champagne has served as Senior Evaluator or Research Fellow for a dozen agencies including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Army Research Institute. When not teaching, Matt can be found cruising with his family, SCUBA diving in the reefs or playing keyboards in his rock band.