The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Back from the Show Circuit
Monday - September 17, 2007 02:53 PM in
Whew! I've just finished doing two major trade shows in four weeks, SpeechTEK and ACCE. Both events followed a nearly identical format (expensive program sessions in parallel with an exhibit floor). Both events ran Monday through Wednesday, and they both even had nearly identical exhibit hours (Monday evening, all day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning).
The similarities end there, though. SpeechTEK was first, and clearly the more exhibitor-friendly of the two events. All exhibitors were given a table and two chairs at no charge, and the exhibits were in a carpeted ballroom, making it possible to set up a booth without having to spend hundreds on carpeting and furniture rental. The show kicked off with a substantial reception on the show floor Monday evening, with loads of substantial free food and drinks. You could (and some people did) eat a full dinner at the event. A nearly free "Passport to Prizes" program (get your card stamped at all participating booths to be entered into a prize drawing) had a substantial number of participating vendors, and drew a lot of traffic to the floor. Badge scanners were provided at no additional charge to exhibitors. The show organizers were successful at keeping the exhibit hall reasonably busy nearly every hour it was open.
ACCE was considerably more exhibitor hostile. Not only was it about 50% more expensive to rent the booth space, but absolutely nothing was included. Renting carpeting and a table added hundreds to the cost, and both the badge scanner and the "Passport to Prizes" program were insanely expensive (we skipped both).
Worse, the organizers did a relatively poor job of drawing conference participants to the exhibit hall. Monday's opening reception had almost no food, and Tuesday--the main day of the event--lacked any significant effort to move people from the conference to the expo. As a result, the show floor was deserted for hours at a time.
In the end, we came home with an acceptable number of new leads from ACCE, but an impressive number from SpeechTEK. There's no question we'll be going back to SpeechTEK. ACCE I'll need to think about.
Posted by Peter Leppik
ACCE was considerably more exhibitor hostile. Not only was it about 50% more expensive to rent the booth space, but absolutely nothing was included. Renting carpeting and a table added hundreds to the cost, and both the badge scanner and the "Passport to Prizes" program were insanely expensive (we skipped both).
Worse, the organizers did a relatively poor job of drawing conference participants to the exhibit hall. Monday's opening reception had almost no food, and Tuesday--the main day of the event--lacked any significant effort to move people from the conference to the expo. As a result, the show floor was deserted for hours at a time.
In the end, we came home with an acceptable number of new leads from ACCE, but an impressive number from SpeechTEK. There's no question we'll be going back to SpeechTEK. ACCE I'll need to think about.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 02:53 PM by | | | |