Here are some of the best questions for an event attendee survey about exhibitor engagement, plus tips to help you craft them. With Specific, you can build this kind of survey in seconds, letting you focus on actionable insights instead of setup.
Best open-ended questions for event attendee surveys on exhibitor engagement
Open-ended questions open the door to detailed stories, unexpected insights, and authentic feedback from your audience. They're a great choice when you want qualitative data and want to encourage attendees to share challenges, experiences, or suggestions you may not have anticipated. While they can lead to slightly higher nonresponse rates—Pew Research Center reports open-ended questions in major surveys sometimes see up to 18% to over 50% nonresponse, compared to 1-2% for closed-ended questions[1]—the depth of insight is worth it. When you combine them with closed questions, you get the best of both worlds, as research supports[3].
What memorable interactions did you have with exhibitors at the event?
Can you share an example of an exhibitor who made a positive impact on your experience?
What would have made it easier for you to engage with exhibitors during the event?
Were any exhibitor booths or activations particularly engaging or unique? Please describe why.
How did exhibitors’ staff contribute to your experience, either positively or negatively?
Is there anything exhibitors could have done differently to capture your attention or interest?
What did you hope to gain from engaging with exhibitors, and were your expectations met?
Did you encounter any challenges navigating the exhibitor area? Please explain.
How did the event’s format (in-person, virtual, hybrid) affect your engagement with exhibitors?
If you could give exhibitors one suggestion for improving engagement at future events, what would it be?
Despite some attendees skipping open-ended questions, the ones who do respond provide incredibly valuable qualitative data—a PubMed study showed 76% of surveyed patients added written comments when given the option[2].
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for event attendee surveys on exhibitor engagement
Single-select multiple-choice questions help you quantify feedback and spot trends fast. They’re a powerful tool when you need metrics, want to reduce friction for the respondent, or set up structured branching (like easy follow-up flows). For attendees not eager to write long answers or when you want a clear landscape view, these are ideal.
Question: How would you rate your overall engagement with exhibitors at this event?
Poor
Fair
Good
Excellent
Question: What was your main reason for visiting exhibitor booths?
Product demos
Networking
Collecting swag or samples
Learning about new solutions
Other
Question: How easy was it to find exhibitors relevant to your interests?
Very difficult
Somewhat difficult
Somewhat easy
Very easy
When to follow up with "why?" Use follow-up "why" questions after a respondent chooses a specific answer (good, poor, or “collecting swag”). This opens the door for deeper understanding. For example, if someone selects "Somewhat difficult," a great follow-up is: “Why was it difficult to find relevant exhibitors?” These contextual follow-ups increase response quality and depth[4].
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include "Other" whenever you want to capture experiences or motivations you may have overlooked. Follow-up questions here can surface unique pain points or unexpected feedback. Often, the real gold is in those edge-case responses—the ones you didn’t anticipate!
Should you use an NPS question for event attendee exhibitor engagement?
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven way to measure attendee advocacy and satisfaction in a single, benchmarkable metric. By asking how likely attendees are to recommend engaging with event exhibitors to others, you reveal an overall sense of engagement and success. NPS also enables easy benchmarking from event to event. If you want to test this approach, you can generate a ready-made NPS survey for event attendee exhibitor engagement instantly.
The power of follow-up questions
The real magic in an event attendee survey comes from layered, smart follow-up questions. If you want to get the full context—why an attendee felt a certain way, or to explore ambiguous responses—Specific’s automatic AI follow-up feature excels here. Research has shown that incorporating tailored follow-ups leads to longer, more informative responses covering more themes, compared to static survey designs[4]. You don’t need to chase respondents afterward—AI handles it instantly, drawing out clarity and nuance. Here’s an example:
Event attendee: “Some booths were hard to find.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share what made those booths difficult to find? Was it signage, event layout, or something else?”
How many followups to ask? 2-3 is the sweet spot for most open-ended event attendee survey questions. This balance keeps the conversation brisk and valuable, and tools like Specific let you set the max depth—or allow the AI to skip ahead when the needed info is collected.
This makes it a conversational survey: Each answer is a step in a flowing chat, turning your survey into a dynamic, human-like interview experience. Engagement rises and feedback quality improves. Conversational surveys even outperform classic forms in terms of clarity and specificity—studies back this up[5].
AI survey response analysis: After you gather rich, narrative feedback, analyzing open-ended event attendee responses could be overwhelming in a traditional setup. But now, with AI survey response analysis, you can chat with your data, distill key points, and surface trends—even with hundreds of unstructured comments.
Give it a try: Automated AI follow-ups in Specific’s survey builder are a game changer. Generate your own conversational event attendee survey and watch how quickly you get deeper, cleaner feedback.
How to prompt ChatGPT or GPTs for the best event attendee survey questions
If you want to use AI yourself to brainstorm questions or categories, start concise, then add context for better results. Begin with:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Event Attendee survey about Exhibitor Engagement.
For even better results, give the AI context—your audience, the nature of the event, pain points, or goals:
We’re organizing a hybrid technology conference and want feedback from event attendees on how engaged they felt with sponsors and exhibitors. Our goal is to improve booth layout and engagement opportunities. Suggest 10 open-ended questions.
Once you’ve got your draft, organize it with a follow-up:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
To double down on, say, “engagement barriers,” prompt:
Generate 10 questions for the ‘engagement barriers’ category.
Iterate, refine, and you’ll get sharper, more tailored survey content every time.
What is a conversational survey (and how is AI-survey generation different)?
A conversational survey mimics a real conversation between your survey and the respondent—no cold forms or rigid page flipping. Each response is acknowledged and explored naturally, so feedback feels like chatting with a knowledgeable curator. AI survey makers like Specific can dynamically adjust, dig deeper, and analyze results in real-time. Here’s a quick comparison:
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Labor-intensive editing and setup | Created in seconds with a smart prompt |
Rigid, linear forms; low engagement | Feels like a chat, adapts to answers on the fly |
Manual analysis of qualitative responses | Built-in AI summarizes and highlights key themes |
Harder to personalize and localize | Supports dynamic follow-ups and easy editing in any language |
Why use AI for event attendee surveys? AI survey generators not only save you hours but unlock deeper, higher-quality, and more actionable insights. With a few prompts you get a vibrant conversational survey, and then AI-powered analytics make sense of qualitative feedback at scale. Explore the AI survey generator or read our how-to guide for creating event attendee surveys about exhibitor engagement to see exact steps.
Specific leads in ease-of-use and depth for creating conversational event attendee surveys—both for survey builders and respondents. Insights are more accurate because responses are clearer and more complete, thanks to the natural chat approach.
See this exhibitor engagement survey example now
Build your event attendee exhibitor engagement survey and instantly get richer, more actionable insights—powered by AI follow-ups and smart analytics—faster than you ever thought possible.