We Need to Know Your Pain Points So We Can Help Solve Them!
Yes, I think I am speaking on behalf of all event industry vendors with this post. I think it is time that we tell you what we want – we want your feedback. One of my Sales Representatives recently published an article about “Questions I Wish People Would Ask”. The article was about inquiries that event organizers should be asking each of their current and potential technology vendors. I thought the article topic was a great idea because it proposed non-biased questions that customers can ask their vendors to get to know them better. This article also served as a light reminder to customers to give us feedback.
Then, more recently, we worked with one of our partners on an RFP where unfortunately, we did not win the business. While I wish we could get them all, sometimes we just can’t seal the deal. Our partner sent the customer a survey asking them what we could have done better in order to be selected.
This gave me the idea for this article.
SO you, the reader- an Organizer that works with all types of vendors to help produce your event – we want your feedback. We want both good and bad feedback because all these help us formulate our offerings.
Every company wants to improve and to do that, feedback is key. It also helps the industry push forward with better products and services that consequently benefit you, the Organizer.
Smart companies use feedback to gain an edge over their competitors. Here’s an example: we rolled out a feature in our mobile app that customers requested. They thought the new functionality was a great idea. We deployed it to a few shows but the feature was not getting used as much as we thought it would be.
Next, we attended shows that implemented the new feature and sat with some end users to see them actually try it. That was when we found out how cumbersome it was to use the newly implemented feature. With a few tweaks, we fixed the package and modified it for better a user-experience. Eventually, this functionality was included as part of our standard app feature set.
We learned two things from that live demo from customers:
- We should test deploy new features with end users and make sure the feature suits industry needs.
- End users have great insight and they can show us what would make our app better.
We do not only want feedback when we are working with you, but also when we are bidding for your business. I won’t go into how much it costs us, in both money and time, to deliver any type of proposal to a potential or renewing customer because that’s just normal business that we all endure. I am just asking that win or lose, you, the customer, provide us with some response other than “We decide to choose someone else” because this, unfortunately, is NOT a form of feedback and does not help us in any way.
Your feedback is valuable to us. Help us, your vendors, so we can help you in your business by providing better services.
Similar to the reason why you conduct surveys on your event, we also want feedback to find out what is working and what we need to improve on. We are not asking for anything unexpected.
Honest feedback
Honest feedback is important for us to steer our proposals and services in the right direction. While you may not use our services this time or you may not renew your contract, your honest feedback can help guide us so that next time we can provide you with competitive and winning proposals.
If we win, your feedback is just as important as it helps reinforce what we are doing well. These will let us know the things that we should keep doing to continue benefiting you, our customer. I know that sometimes it might be hard to give honest feedback because you may have worked with someone for a while and now you are choosing to work with someone new but trust me – we can take it straight. It really does not hurt and it’s better than getting no feedback at all. Your vendor will stop wondering what they did wrong to lose your business (and they can finally sleep better at night).
I hope we are not asking for too much. We simply want your honest-to-goodness feedback. In the long run, this will be beneficial to the both of us.
For more information on the suite of Core-apps products, please contact us.
