Now that your first comedy show has been and gone, how do you know if it was a success?
There are many aspects to a successful comedy event, other than it being funny or profitable. Customers today are seeking a good experience from the moment they arrive to the time they walk out the door.
Your performing comedians as well as your own staff have a habit of telling you what they think you want to hear and won’t necessarily pass on any constructive criticism. The good news is that your customers or attendees will always have some critical feedback for you. You just need to ask them.
Use surveys post-event
A tool I have found indispensable for evaluating comedy shows is SurveyMonkey. You can access SurveyMonkey directly from Eventbrite through the extensions tool. There are some ready-made survey templates you can use or you can create your own customised survey.
Before you create your survey, think about the feedback emails you have received and which ones you answered. A good survey should be simple, fairly brief and easy to complete. Anything that is time-consuming or complicated is likely to get deleted by the recipient.
Stick to the information you really want to know and try to keep it to no more than 8 – 12 questions. Start off with a general question about satisfaction with the event overall and then ask more specific questions about the performers, the venue or staff. Make your survey easy for people to answer by using a basic multiple-choice rating scale, like you’ve seen on TripAdvisor – poor, fair, good, very good, excellent. Offer recipients the opportunity to provide a comment for each question but don’t make this compulsory. The comments will often be your most valuable information.
Survey results may surprise you. British people may be coy about offering criticism in person, but not necessarily from behind a keyboard. Something as subjective as comedy is likely to draw a variety of responses, so look for trends. A one-off comment about a particular comedian being excellent or terrible can be taken with a pinch of salt, but several people saying the same thing is information you should act on.
Keep in mind something called ‘non-response bias’, which is the idea that people with nothing to complain about are less likely to fill out a survey. Sending surveys soon after an event is also a good way to soak up any potential complaints before they hit the internet and are forever etched on review sites for people to read what you did so terribly wrong!
Encourage reviews from your audience
Encouraging online reviews from customers can be a doubled-edged sword, because you can’t pick which customers will post reviews. However, anyone serious about their events will seek public reviews from their customers as a way of promoting their business.
Social media has also become a strong influencer in this area. People who found out about your event through Facebook are likely to leave a rating on your Facebook page afterwards that their friends will see.
Again, some comments will need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The important thing is how you react to them. Review websites like TripAdvisor and Google will allow you to respond to reviews, which is very important when you inevitably get a bad review. There are guidelines on how to respond to reviews on each of these websites but the main thing is to be professional and courteous. If something went wrong, apologise and offer an explanation. If people didn’t like a certain act, explain that you have lots more acts coming up in the future and turn it into a positive.
Occasionally, a review will crop up that is untrue and unjustified, that will test your ability to remain professional. Before you respond, remember that review websites are moderated and have guidelines that reviewers must adhere to. If a review contains coarse language, excessive use of capital letters and exclamation marks or blatantly false information, you can flag it as inappropriate. Having a ridiculous review removed is better than making excuses for something which didn’t happen, so always keep this option in mind.
Address complaints professionally and in a timely manner
Written complaints, just like good reviews, are a valuable form of feedback about your event. If a customer has taken the time to write to you about their experience, you should take the time to respond. The fact that they have written to you directly is a great opportunity to resolve the issue offline without a negative review being published.
Write a response which addresses their concerns and offer them a tangible resolution. Free tickets to a future event or a refund will often cost you a lot less than the lost sales from a negative review.
To complete the feedback circle, and have a full 360 degree view of your event’s performance, there are two more groups of people you need to consult – the comedians and venue management.
What did the comedians think?
The performers are the lifeblood of your event. Comedians are a close-knit community, and without their support, your events may quickly fall into decline. Getting feedback from comedians is much more of a challenge than getting feedback from customers. Comedians can be evasive when they aren’t happy about something, so you may need to be creative in seeking out their opinion.
Talking to the performers and asking their opinion about the event can provide some great insight. There are things that bother comedians which event managers simply wouldn’t consider. Often this can be a minor technical issue with the sound or lighting that may have encumbered their performance. Sometimes comedians can offer good feedback on the how the venue has been laid out for comedy. They’ve played hundreds of clubs up and down the country and can usually spot something obvious that can be easily improved, such as moving the stage further away from the bar or turning off lights in other parts of the venue when the comedy is on.
The best time to talk to the comedians is during the interval after they’ve finished their set. Before that, they will be focused on their performance.
What did the venue think?
Luckily, getting venue feedback is a lot easier than getting actionable information from comedians. Venue management will gladly provide both positive and negative feedback of your event which is extremely beneficial..
Schedule an event debrief meeting. The venue staff may have quite a different perspective on the success of the event from you and won’t just use laughter as a gauge of the event’s success.
Their support, like the comedians’ support, can determine whether your events succeed in the future, so take the time to listen to their concerns and be forthcoming in finding solutions. Venue management may raise issues that you have never considered before, but if they are important to the venue, be amicable about how you address them.
The relationship with the venue that you should be aspiring to is collaborative promotion for your events. Unless they are supportive of your shows and can see the financial benefit in them, your events will not feature in their promotional materials. Some venues have impressive mailing lists and a strong social media following which can greatly benefit attendance at your event.
In conclusion
A successful comedy event should be measured on more than just your attendees laughing. Listening to feedback from everyone involved from the audience to the venue to the performers themselves, can take your event from being something with potential, to something that people simply cannot afford to miss.
