As bad as that may feel at first, it does not signal the beginning of the end of your event management career. In fact, this type of feedback is the most helpful for developing your skills. You are surely doing many things well, which others may have confirmed, but some things are simply not yet perfect—and attendees usually recognize that better than you do yourself.
Things almost never go perfectly, and there is usually something that bothers you personally, even despite conscientious organization. You may have noticed this yourself when attending other events, such as when a session had to be rescheduled at short notice and you were annoyed that you hadn't been informed by the organizer a little earlier. Yet, when you think back to that same conference, you could surely list many things you enjoyed as well.
Negative comments are not always just negative
Perhaps you have acted like most attendees and kept your thoughts to yourself. But then there are others who don't believe in fuming in silence and instead openly address what bothers them. It is unlikely that anyone has truly malicious intentions with their criticism. Therefore, always view feedback as a hint and advice on where to make improvements next time.
Turning negative reactions into positive ones offers the chance to better understand your attendees and their expectations. View every piece of feedback as an aid to improving your event. Someone who doesn't care about a conference is unlikely to think about what exactly went wrong and where things should be better in the future.
And don't worry: as long as you didn't experience the event as an absolute nightmare yourself, the attendees likely see it similarly.
Reward honesty
Crucially: respond to every piece of feedback you receive. Everyone who mentions your account, for example via an @-mention on Twitter, is not writing a note to themselves. Anyone who includes the @ in a tweet is reaching out to you and waiting for a response. If none comes, the author could easily conclude that the organizer is simply not interested in feedback—not a good impression. Therefore, don't forget to briefly thank them for their feedback and show that you appreciate both positive and negative comments. Attendees sometimes discover areas that need improvement that the organization team itself might not notice. Feel free to admit that you hadn't thought of that yet.
Don't give feedback on the feedback
Formulating a response and saying thank you is much easier when attendees provide a good template with words of praise. With critical remarks, however, something else happens: sometimes you fall into a defensive posture while reading and secretly start planning the best strategy to counter and defend your actions. But that is exactly what you should avoid. At the beginning, it is only about listening—in this case, reading the message in its entirety and letting it sink in. Notice how your attitude toward the statement changes over time. Immediately after reading, you might want to dismiss the complaint and explain how wrong the person is or that there is a reason why things happened that way. If you fast-forward a little, you will usually find that your initial stance fades and you start to engage more with the core of the message. Is what they said perhaps true after all? This shift often happens subconsciously, and once the dust has settled, it is the best time to respond. It is then important not to launch into justifications, as that gives the impression that the attendee's message was superfluous because the situation described was unavoidable.
Also, keep in mind that the conversation would surely be more moderate if it were held offline and that the comments are not a personal attack on you. All the more reason not to become insulting yourself. That ultimately only leads away from the actual topic. If you receive a message calling the conference a waste of time, ask what exactly the person did not like.
Deleting is not a solution
Time is short, the character count is limited, and the annoyance has only just been felt. This may be why the tone of some posts is sometimes a bit rougher, leading to an even greater defensive reaction on the recipient's side. When others judge the organization of your conference so harshly, and it happens on your public Facebook profile, you are quickly tempted to simply delete the comments and block the authors as a precaution to avoid further remarks. Denying individuals the ability to offer criticism? Not good.
Anyone who completely suppresses critical voices has only solved the problem for the moment. If an attendee wants to vent their frustration, there are several valves for doing so. As soon as official channels are blocked, the whole thing can escalate further. Even if you are able to keep your own accounts "clean," you have no influence on the activities of the attendee, who is now likely even more annoyed by how the criticism was handled and is telling others about it.
By the way, the "do not delete" principle should also apply to your own posts—another reason not to react impulsively. Before you edit or delete an ill-considered post, someone might have beaten you to it and is already busy sharing a screenshot of your post—as an example of how not to handle critical voices.
Obtain a balanced view of opinions
Asking for feedback is generally not too difficult for organizers. Judging by standard phrases like "let us know how you liked the event," one's opinion is always welcome. But to express a genuine interest in the visitors' impressions, it is not enough to include a sentence on the event website that merely suggests the organization team is open to critical remarks.
Furthermore, there is a high probability of only capturing the voices of those at the outer edges of the opinion spectrum. Visitors often share their thoughts when they are extremely enthusiastic or extremely dissatisfied. Everyone whose impressions are balanced, however, speaks up less frequently. Learning more about their views would be helpful. Surveys during or after the event should provide a more balanced picture and show that the organizer is serious about the request for feedback. A conference app with an integrated rating function might even appease some critics in the end. With the feeling of being able to express their frustration in this way, the urge to do so on their own blog or the event's Facebook page may not be quite as strong. The results can also be used well for an official statement later on, provided certain trends emerge and you notice, for example, that many complained about long waiting times at check-in.
Criticism as an opportunity
What happens with the criticism in the end is up to you. But one thing is certain: those who do not tolerate criticism will not improve in the long run. Therefore, engage with the opinions of the attendees and consider whether a solution can be found. This does not mean that you necessarily have to change everything that was criticized next time.
Sometimes a short meeting with the organization team helps to include a few more perspectives and perform targeted troubleshooting. Collect all points of complaint and clarify together whether these require changes for future events. If news of a cancelled presentation did not spread quickly enough, you should consider whether an app with an integrated newsfeed could provide a remedy.
Especially when some points are mentioned several times and trends emerge, there is a need for action. Then it wasn't just one person who felt the breaks between sessions were too short, but the time was truly too tight.
If you take such feedback as an opportunity to change something in your planning next time, it shows not only that you are open to suggestions for improvement, but that you can also implement them. Something that clearly speaks in favor of your event.
One final tip: The risk of having to deal with negative feedback during your event is significantly lower with the right event management software.
