Best questions for conference participants survey about post event follow up

Here are some of the best questions for a conference participants survey about post event follow up, plus a few simple ideas for crafting questions that work. You can use Specific to build a conversational survey for this in seconds.

10 best open-ended questions for post event follow up with conference participants

Open-ended questions are powerful because they let conference participants share honest reactions, specific stories, and nuanced feedback. They work best when you want deeper insight—what stuck, what didn’t, and actionable next steps. But they can lead to higher nonresponse rates: according to Pew Research, open-ended survey questions can see nonresponse rates as high as 18%—sometimes over 50%—while closed-ended items are closer to 1-2% [1]. It's about balance: open-enders are gold mines when you want to uncover the “why” behind experience, and they work even better when paired with follow-ups or conversation.

1. What stood out to you most from this conference?

2. What topics or sessions would you want to hear more about in the future?

3. What could we do to make post-event follow up more valuable for you?

4. Describe a connection or idea you’re planning to act on because of this event.

5. What feedback would you like to give about our post-event resources or communications?

6. What’s the biggest challenge you faced after attending the conference?

7. How did the event influence your work or perspective?

8. If you could change one thing about our follow up, what would it be?

9. How likely are you to stay connected with people you met here, and why?

10. Is there anything else you'd like us to know about your post-event experience?

Combining these with AI-powered follow-ups keeps engagement high, making it easy for participants to clarify details and for organizers to understand root causes. Conversational surveys with AI assistants can even result in more informative, specific, and relevant replies than traditional survey forms [2].

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for post event follow up

Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you need quick, quantitative takeaways or want to start a conversation without overwhelming respondents. Sometimes, providing a shortlist of options gives participants a gentle nudge, removing friction and helping you set up easy follow-ups to dig into the “why.”

Question: How helpful did you find the post-event follow up communications?

• Very helpful

• Somewhat helpful

• Not helpful

Question: Which post-event resources did you engage with?

• Session recordings

• Networking groups

• Speaker follow-ups

• Event report or summary

• Did not engage

• Other

Question: What would improve future follow ups for you?

• Quicker communication

• More focused resources

• Better networking options

• Clear action steps

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" Use a follow-up “why?” question right after someone selects an option—they're more likely to elaborate on what led to their response. For example, if someone chooses “Not helpful” to a communication question, prompt them with: “Can you tell us what would have made the follow-up more useful for you?” This turns a quick checkbox answer into an actionable conversation.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? The “Other” option is a simple way to let participants express needs or experiences you didn’t anticipate. When you follow up on “Other,” you can uncover surprising feedback—a new resource, niche interest, or an unaddressed challenge. These insights might drive your next big event improvement.

NPS: measuring satisfaction with post-event follow up

NPS (Net Promoter Score) is one of the most widely recognized benchmarks for gauging satisfaction and loyalty. For post event follow up, it helps you understand not just whether participants were satisfied, but why they’d recommend your event or not—and what you could do better. By asking, “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend this conference to a colleague or friend, based on our post-event communication and resources?” you unlock a clear satisfaction metric.

If you want to jump straight in, generate an NPS survey for conference participants about post event follow up in one click.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where the magic happens. For every initial answer, you get deeper context, clarification, and unexpected detail—especially when the conversation feels natural and friendly. Research shows that “pre-calling” (getting in touch before a follow-up) resulted in participants returning questionnaires eight days faster [3], and conversational surveys with automated AI follow-ups can elicit much richer, specific answers [2].

Specific’s automatic AI follow-up questions feature is designed to act like an expert interviewer, asking the right clarifying questions at the right moment. Instead of sending dozens of emails to clarify a fuzzy response, you get richer insights right from the first touch—saving hours for both you and your participants.

• Conference participant: “I liked some parts of the event, but the follow up emails were overwhelming.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you share which parts of the follow up emails were overwhelming or too frequent?”

Without that second question, you’d have never known whether the issue was frequency, length, tone, or just the number of links—and you’d miss the chance to fix it.

How many followups to ask? In our experience, two to three follow-up questions are typically enough to clarify intent and collect detailed feedback—without fatiguing the respondent. With Specific’s settings, you can decide how deep the AI should go, or let the respondent skip ahead once they’ve told you what you need.

This makes it a conversational survey: By layering conversational logic and AI-driven follow-ups, your survey shifts from a static questionnaire into a genuine dialogue. This is exactly what makes conversational surveys so effective for post event follow up.

AI response analysis, themes, tags: Even with plenty of open-ended replies, analyzing all of them is easy. With features like AI survey response analysis, you can instantly pull out top themes, tags, and even chat live with the data to surface trends and insights that would take ages to spot by hand.

Automated AI-follow-ups bring a new dimension to conference feedback—try generating your own survey and see how much more useful your responses get.

How to prompt GPT for great post event follow up survey questions

If you use ChatGPT (or any GPT-based tool), the quality of your questions comes down to your prompt. The simplest place to start:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for conference participants survey about post event follow up.

But it works even better with more specific context (your audience, goals, type of event, what you want to learn):

I organized a software developer conference focused on cloud technologies. I want to understand what resources attendees found useful, how effective our follow-up was, and if we inspired further networking or learning. Suggest 10 open-ended questions I could ask conference participants about post event follow up for qualitative feedback and practical ideas.

Then, to improve the flow:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

After that, pick categories (like “Resources” or “Networking”) you want to explore further:

Generate 10 questions for categories “Resources” and “Networking” for conference participants post event follow up.

If you want to hand the heavy lifting to AI, the Specific AI survey generator can craft, edit, and deploy tailored surveys using just a few natural language instructions.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is just what it sounds like: an interactive, chat-like experience where an AI agent guides users through each question, branching naturally based on each reply. Rather than a static form, the survey feels adaptive, responsive, and human—breaking down longer processes into comfortable bite-sized exchanges.

Compared to traditional manual survey creation, AI-generated conversational surveys are faster to build, easier to personalize, and produce higher quality feedback. Here’s a quick comparison:

Why use AI for conference participant surveys? AI survey builders like Specific transform the process—making it simple to adapt questions, analyze responses, and generate deeper understanding with less effort. With built-in functions like AI survey editing, automated follow-ups, and contextual analysis, Specific delivers a best-in-class conversational survey experience for both organizers and participants.

If you want to learn practical steps, check out our guide on how to create a conference participant survey about post event follow up, or browse our interactive AI survey examples for inspiration.

See this post event follow up survey example now

Explore an AI-powered survey tailored for conference participants post event follow up to discover richer, clearer feedback—quicker, and with smarter follow-ups—so you can improve your next event with real insights.