The importance of feedback
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-04-30 14:46:09 - Graham EllisMuch of my job is answering questions that people ask. And another big part is answering questions that people haven't actually asked, but would ask if they knew they wanted / needed to ask - it's called training, or you could call it "proactive informing" rather than "reactive informing".
Feedback is the lifeblood of this informer's world. At the end of every course, we provide delegates with a course review sheet - on which we invite comments on various aspects of the training and - crucially - encourage additional comments and suggestions. We can't implement every idea that comes our way; some would simply cost too much (in terms of extra time taken or financially) to carry through, others would be impractical for us or lead to significant negative impacts for other customers, and others would lead us into trying to teach subjects that we simply don't know. But feedback is imprortant - critically important - to us moving our hotel and training product forward. And indeed it's not just reviews sheets that we use - sometimes you'll see me stop and make a note of a good idea during a course, scrawl a comment to myself on a corner of the board, or take a photograph of a new diagram that resulted from an interactive class discussion.
On a course, where the delegates and tutor are interacting, feedback is easy. You need to be a pretty automatoned tutor not to notice it (but there are some truely awful tutors about though - the "I will read the notes to you" brigade). However, you need to have a system / scheme in place to make later use of the reactions and feedback. We're fortunate here - teaching programming languages in the way that we do, with examples written in front of delegates to show them not only the answers, but also how the answers were derived also leaves a footprint on the tutor's computer - a set of reminder files that can be reviewed later on, used to enhance materials, etc. And we do make use of that material; after a course, I'll often spend 10% more time on following up to enhance our methods and resources, and occasionally I can spend another 25%. Yes - that's a whole day of work as the follow up from a four day course. It is worthwhile, though - it IS very gratifying to to hear comments like "what excellent material" and "how do you come up with such ideas / ways of presenting?" on subsequent courses and, really, I have prior customers to thank for their ideas and feedback.
Feedback also makes for future business. Here are two reviews - one of ours, and one of someone elses:
And I'll give you a clue - we do hotel rooms and training courses. We don't do fishing trips.
Away from face-to-face events, feedback is rarer. At the extreme, how often do you find something really helpful on a web page, but fail to provide feedback to say "This was helpful"? If you're like me (brutal honesty here!), you'll so often find answers online but fail to provide a "yes - that helped". Of course, us web site providers don't always help you to provide feedback easily by providing a "like" button - Facebook have things like that so right, twee though it may look at first.
I started writing this article, thinking of "black hole answering" - where I (or you) provide answers to questions - on forums, via email, or via some other route, and the answer seems to disappear into the ether without trace. Frankly, if someone asks a question on a forum / starts a thread, I think it's rude of them not to come back with a follow up / "thank you" ... something at least to acknowledge the answers that have been written, often involving the investment of a great deal of time and thought into the answer. "TIA" - Thanks in Advance - on the original post is a poor substitute - but at least it says tells you the the "OP" - Original Poster - won't necessarily geel (s)he should get back and follow up.
By email, I think it's even ruder not to get back and say "thanks for the answer". If the question is one that solicits sales information ("please send me course information") and has been sent as a circular to half a dozen possible providers, I can sort of understand the lack of acknowldegement ... but if the question is a technical one which is being answered free, gratis, for nothing and with no prospect of business it's "IMHO" - in my humble opinion - unacceptable to the extent that I won't answer further enquiries from the same writer.
Anyway - I'm rambling. I started with the importance of feedback, and finished with it too ... but you probably notice the importance of a good and enthusiastic team too. And - yes - we have an excellent team who enjoy what they do.