MC: 0:00

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready Set Action.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

It's the Experience Action Podcast and guess what? It's events season. We're all attending conferences, speaking at industry events and lots of other ways that we interact in person. That's why I'm so excited about this week's question.

Listener Question: 0:50

Hi Jeannie. I attend a lot of big events and some are so much better than others. What CX best practices would you recommend to event planners?

Jeannie Walters: 0:59

Oh, we've all been there, right. We've been to events that have absolutely blown us away. The attention to detail, the way that we feel kind of in awe of what they actually created, the moments of surprise and delight that can send anyone going back to their workplace and their calendar saying I need to make time for this next year too. So, for all the event planners out there, first of all, let me say you work hard. We recognize that it is not an easy task. In today's environment. We have to deal with shrinking event budgets, increased spend for the events that we do host and lots of other points of friction. So first of all, before we answer the question, let's talk about just sending kudos to all those event planners out there. We appreciate what you do and, as a speaker, as someone who does a lot of keynoting and workshops and different things at events, I'm often there in the role of a B2B influencer, so I work with all sorts of different teams. I work with PR, I work with the event coordinators, I work with the clients who bring me in to speak to their teams and the AV teams. Everybody there plays a very, very important role. So thank you to everybody who pulls off these amazing events. Some of these events have maybe a few dozen people, some of them have several thousand. So let's talk about some of the ways that you can have an impact on the experience that your attendees have at your events. I'm going to go through this in a way that will start small some of the little touches that might make a difference and then go from there and let's dream big, because, just like everywhere else in customer experience, I'm really excited about the future here. We have amazing technology to tap into. We have different points of data to understand to make things better for the people who attend. So let's talk about, first of all, what are the some of the small touches that make a big difference, and I'm going to share one that I've talked about before: Double sided name tags.

Jeannie Walters: 3:14

Sounds so simple, sounds like something most of us could do, but how many of us have been wearing those lanyards beautifully made lanyards, branded, sponsored, maybe a big plastic sheet that covers your name tag with a QR code, different things about yourself? Some of the name tags themselves are fantastic, and then, just throughout the day, they spin around, so as you're talking to somebody, you don't realize that they are not seeing your name tag. Double-sided name tags can make all the difference. The other thing I would say are adjustable lanyards as well. I often self-adjust my lanyard because I'm not the tallest person in the room, so I want the name tag to be a little higher. So I will adjust by making a knot in my lanyard in the back. But the more that we can give options of how people want to wear their name tag that's a very simple thing that we can do A clip versus a lanyard versus a pin Give people I Give people different ways of doing that. I love the magnet ones. Those are great because they don't mess up your clothes, but they're also really sturdy as well. So lots of different options for that.

Jeannie Walters: 4:24

We also want to think about the fact that most people attending our events have not been to the venue, necessarily, or an event like this before. So signage, signage, signage I don't care if it's not the most glamorous signage in the world either. Give people ideas of where and how to get to where they're going. One of my favorite examples of this was at the huge, the enormous Salesforce event in San Francisco, they even had decals on the sidewalks outside of the hotels where most of the attendees stayed, with directions of not only the direction of where to get there, but how long of a walk it was. It's brilliant because then you can make an informed decision. Do I need to get an Uber? Well, it's only 0.8 miles away. So they were doing things like that to give people information to make better choices within the signs. Direction and wayfinding are so important at these big events. Make sure that, whatever you're doing, you are giving people information every step of the way, literally. You could even use sidewalk chalk for that. So get creative. Think about ways that you can really walk in your customer's shoes and help them find where they're going.

Jeannie Walters: 5:40

I also like the idea of seating people who are maybe more engaged, people who are more likely to ask questions, and things like that. Give them a chance to sit up front, invite them into the process. Encourage people to really engage in different ways. We've all been to events where it's been people on a stage for hours not interacting with the audience. Those are painful. We do not have the attention span we used to. I personally really don't like sitting that long. So think about ways you can break that up. Engage with speakers who are more apt to include people, to be more interactive, to answer questions, because then they will bring that energy to the stage. They will interact with the audience. The audience will have a much better time.

Jeannie Walters: 6:37

Another idea for you is real-time event support. Now, this can be anywhere from simple to pretty complex, but one of the things that I really like is when we have ways to access information that we need quickly. Most people want to know what is the Wi-Fi code here? How can I make my connection work? So that has to be everywhere, not just on signs, but also, if you're using an app, even on the agenda page for people who have signed in, having QR codes around that people can use. There are all sorts of ways to provide that information. Qr codes are also a great way to link to things like a frequently asked question page something super simple or where to find the person that you need.

Jeannie Walters: 7:24

You can also use social media for this. If you have social media interaction at your event, use it to occasionally post things like hey, if you're looking for the bathrooms, don't forget, there are two on your right and two on your left. This can be really helpful, especially in those outdoor venues that can get a little crazy as well. So think about ways that you can communicate so that giving people information that they might not need until they need it. Of course, bathrooms are one of those things. Wi-fi is another. What if somebody gets hurt or needs assistance? What's the best way for people to do that? Instead of just making an announcement in the beginning of the event when people might not think it applies to them, when they need it, have a way for them to access that information. So those are a few ideas that I believe anybody can really apply to any size of event, but let's talk about enhancing the experience just a little bit more.

Jeannie Walters: 8:19

One way that we can do this is, leading up to the event. Send some tailored, personalized communications based on what they've indicated are their interests. So maybe alert certain people as you introduce new workshops or breakouts or keynote speakers, based on who they've been excited about in the past. We can also do things like try to curate networking opportunities, provide small group topics or specific meeting places for people who have similar interests. There are some low-cost, low-key ways to do this that make people feel more connected. A lot of organizations now have really restricted their travel budget around these types of events, these types of professional development events. So what I've noticed is a lot of organizations are not sending a team of people anymore. They are sending two, maybe one person, so that one person is going there for very specific reasons, but guess what? They are on their own. We all know it's more fun when we know people at these types of things. So provide opportunities for people who don't know people to know people, and we do that through small group interaction, encouraging networking, curating those types of opportunities for them.

Jeannie Walters: 9:39

We also, of course, want to be aware of how to be inclusive. Any event needs to think about how are we providing access to people who have ability that is different than our own? That can mean providing visual aids, that can provide additional signage in different languages, that can be a sign language interpreter. There are all sorts of ways to really think about that. So if you know you have attendees who are coming to your event who have certain needs, make sure you're really thinking about what is accessible to them as well. And if you are serving food, of course, dietary restrictions are also something to be aware of and inclusive about. So just having choices that people can make it doesn't mean that we have to make every single thing gluten-free or vegetarian. It just means that we have to have those options for people so they feel included and get treated in a similar way as everybody else.

Jeannie Walters: 10:36

Another thought is some of these big events have a lot going on that can be really challenging for certain people. Introverts sometimes just want space. They need a time to take a break. Even those of us who aren't classic introverts need that sometimes. I think of myself as more of an ambivert, meaning that I do a lot of work on my own. I enjoy people, I enjoy parties, I enjoy those things, but I run out of steam as well. So, thinking about how can you create sensory-friendly places, one of the things I've seen lately that is kind of fun is I've seen that they have people walking around with stress-reduction dogs so you can go pet a dog for a few minutes. It lowers your cortisol level, it lowers your blood pressure. It's a great way to take a break.

Jeannie Walters: 11:22

There are different things like that as well as just quiet rooms where it says kind of like a library, this is a room where you can recharge, you can work, you can do certain things, but we request that you don't have conversations. This is just a quiet room for people to get away. That can be very effective as well. And as somebody who does attend events. As an influencer and a media person, I always appreciate a great media room because that's where there are plenty of outlets. There might be water, coffee, things like that, but it's a time when, if I am responsible for writing an article or making a video, I need some time to plan that to really get to work. It's great if I have a safe space for that where I can get away and get that done. So that's a shout out to anybody planning for future events with media or influencers it's great to have a great media room.

Jeannie Walters: 12:17

Let's think big. Let's think about a big, huge event in the future. What could we do with that? Well, you know what I'm going to bring up. Right, I'm going to bring up artificial intelligence. Now think about what we could do if we could use AI to really tap in anytime somebody registers. They would have to opt into this, of course, but let us look at their LinkedIn history. Let us look at their past event history with our organization. Maybe ask a few questions and then say, okay, here's your personalized agenda based on what you've said is interesting to you. Now, some of this is done with certain apps and opt-ins right now. Like you can say, yes, I'm interested in customer experience and the digital experience and AI, but usually what happens is you just get everything that has those words in it and it doesn't feel super curated. I'm talking about curating something. So it says we would suggest these events for you, this networking event, this person to meet. There are so many ways to leverage this. I think it's a really exciting chapter that we're about to enter in the event planning space.

Jeannie Walters: 13:28

However, I'm going to put a little asterisk on that, because one of the best parts of events, in my humble opinion, are those spontaneous things that happen. We bump into somebody in the hallway and we have this amazing conversation. Maybe we're in totally different industries, maybe we would never be at the same breakout session, but we're at the bigger event and we happen to get along. That's great. When we happen to end up in the wrong room and we end up hearing a speaker, we did not expect that blew our mind. There are so many amazing things that can happen spontaneously. We want to leave a little room for that whenever we are suggesting agendas, because that's the magic of being together in person.

Jeannie Walters: 14:10

That is harder to replicate with those virtual events. When we have event apps, how can we really use those to their full potential? Many events now have apps which are super helpful. You can find attendees, you can look up speaker bios all that is right there. But maybe providing a little more interactivity asking people for their specific action steps, having reminders about where to go, interactive maps, interactive curated networking suggestions all sorts of ways to really lean in to the technology that's available. And then we could also have things that again some of this is in play now, where some apps now will say okay, if you missed a breakout session, the recording and the summary will be on our app within the next day or so. That's all great, but what if we did some more with that in a dynamic way? What if we did more polling with the app or different things to really find out how are people feeling here today and how can we use that to improve the event in real time? Now I've seen this done. There are times where sometimes the app has said what did you think about event or what did you think about specific breakout sessions or keynote sessions? And there was a complaint one year that there weren't enough chairs in the breakout sessions. So the next day they announced that they had brought in 1000 more chairs to alleviate that pressure point. That's a great way to use dynamic information.

Jeannie Walters: 15:42

There are so many ways to think about events. There are always too many things to do and again, let's give props to the event planners out there who are making things happen. As event attendees, it is our job to number one understand where we are and why we're there. I see a lot of people go to events. They don't really partake in the content, they don't really attend sessions and then they say, well, it was okay. So, as attendees, it's our job to really get clear and intentional about why we're there and on the flip side, I would say for the event planners, it's also our job to be intentional and proactive about the experience and the journey we want our attendees to have. I love going to events, I love speaking at events, I love being a part of that magic that happens when we're all together.

Jeannie Walters: 16:39

And yes, there are sometimes things that happen that are disappointing or don't live up to our expectations, like any other customer journey. But I think, for the most part, if we can partner in this way, as both event planner and attendee, that's when really amazing things happen. So I would also encourage event planners to really listen to the feedback that you receive, because sometimes it might not be wrapped in a bow, it might not be something that you think you can do anything about today, but I encourage you to think about innovation. How can we innovate around our next event based on what customers are telling us? And let's get real. Sometimes we can't fit enough chairs in the room, so how can we better set expectations for the attendees so that they don't leave disappointed.

Jeannie Walters: 17:28

I appreciate the work that everybody who pulls off these amazing events, that you do, and I appreciate all the attendees who also make these events happen. We are in cooperation here and we need to embrace that and look for ways to really support both sides of this equation. So here's to customer experience, here's to the event planners and here's to the people out there who are asking great questions. So don't forget, you can ask me whatever question you want. Leave me your voice recording at askjeannievip. You can do this on your laptop, on your phone. It's super easy and simple and, if you want to, you can share who you are and we will let you know when your episode is live. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you for being here with me on the Experience Action Podcast and I will talk to you soon, maybe at an event. Take care.

Announcement: 18:28

Do you want to create an unforgettable event experience? Let's make it happen. Jeannie Walters brings real world customer experience, insights, engaging storytelling and actionable strategies to help your audience think differently about CX. Whether it's a keynote, workshop, or panel discussion, we'd love to help make your event stand out. Visit experienceinvestigatorscom to learn more and to book Jeannie for your next event.