German software company SAP demonstrated its commitment to attendee feedback when it created a customer advisory board three years ago for its Sapphire Now conference, which takes place every spring in Orlando and draws more than 22,000 customers, partners, and employees. The company selected about 20 customers and partners to participate in focus groups at the event and to complete surveys afterward.
But SAP’s senior director of events, Keegan Hooks, said the company was concerned that feedback might be skewed by the fact that participants were receiving compensation in the form of free conference registration. So this year, the company initiated a new strategy, partnering with doctoral students from the University of Central Florida to conduct ad-hoc interviews of attendees on the show floor.
“It made sense to say, ‘Can we do a trade of information? You come help us, we’ll give you the questions and do the training,’” Hooks said. “We can get the real first impressions that we want. ... What are people feeling? What’s happening when they walk on the show floor? What is impressing them? And then we’ll give you the analytics to study on your own.”
Working in pairs, the students conducted 117 brief interviews throughout the three-day show, using questions provided by SAP. At the end of each day, the company’s analytics team provided a summary of the data, allowing Hooks and her team to see the most common keywords used to describe the event (such as “organized,” “exciting,” and “informative”), what respondents liked the most (networking and education), and suggestions for improvement (the keynote theater felt too small and some signage was confusing).
“The people were very receptive to responding to it,” Hooks said. “And it validated a lot of what we were hoping to see in the trends of what people were interested in.” She said organizers are developing new questions to use in a similar survey program for next year’s event. “This is definitely a path we are going to go down.”
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