2024 Esri User Conference Survey Highlights
Your voice matters!
We value your Insights! Thank you for participating in the 2024 Esri User Conference (Esri UC) surveys! Your thoughts on various aspects of our business, your event experience, and suggestions for future improvements are important to us.
We've been hard at work analyzing your feedback and making some exciting changes based on your ideas. Keep reading to discover how your voice is shaping the future of Esri!
Also, you don't want to miss an exciting announcement about how your feedback changed the venue of the 2025 Esri UC Thursday Night Party. Read until the end to learn about where the party will be held next year!
To contact the Esri Customer Experience (CX) team, email cx@esri.com.
Photos shared by participants of the 2024 Esri UC Daily Survey. Thank you for sharing your experience!
Did you know?
Each year your feedback is captured in relation to the Esri User Conference through multiple surveys. We value your insights and use them to drive meaningful improvements, making each event even better than the last. After reviewing all your comments about UC 2024, we identified the following takeaways for the event. Scroll down to see your feedback in action.
Your Insights, Our Opportunties
With so many awesome topics to choose from, greater clarity on the required experience level for each session would greatly enhance your event experience.
As the number of attendees at UC continues to grow, connecting with peers from your specific industry and region can be challenging. You requested more tools to make networking easier.
Survey Highlight
Digital Access attendees continue to express gratitude for the ability to attend vitrually and request for even more offerings.
Thank you to our users whose enthusiasm and participation continue to make the Esri User Conference successful. Based on your feedback, we are inspired by the possibilities that lie ahead to continue to grow and advance the conference. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all who contributed to this year's conference. See you next year!
Michele Cole, Head of Events Marketing
Your Insights, Our Opportunities
There are many more session topics relevant to your work than you can fit into your schedule while attending in San Diego. To maximize your in-person session attendance, you indicated that it's essential to reduce scheduling conflicts among similar topics, increase room sizes and offerings for popular sessions, and group related topics together, both spatially and temporally. These changes will facilitate easier navigation of the event, minimize overcrowding, and enable you to attend more sessions of interest.
Your Feedback In Action
Some of you noticed that we listened to your feedback from last year by increasing the size of demo theaters, but we still have work to do to streamline offerings and improve the in-person session experience. Work is underway to improve the session catalog for UC 2025 based on your feedback!
Your Insights, Our Opportunties
While many attendees loved the technical demos and keynote speakers during the plenary, some noted that better time management and shorter plenary sessions could enhance the overall experience.
Survey Highlight
Survey participants were especially inspired by the advancements in Esri technology demonstrated on the plenary stage, as well as the keynote remarks by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz :
Our Digital Experience team values hearing from our attendees, both our online audience and those able to join us in San Diego. We always aim to create and enhance digital experiences that help you all engage with our event before, during, and after the conference. Thank you so much for providing your feedback to us. We actively use it to weigh and prioritize our digital improvements.
Alan Kane, Digital Event Strategist
Your Insights, Our Opportunities
While many attendees marvelled at the planning that went into the event, others recommended ways to improve interacting with their personal schedules and navigating the halls of the San Diego Convention Center. You asked for a more streamlined schedule experience, by requesting the abiity to filter favorited and recorded sessions and to add multiple sessions per timeslot. You also indicated that a location-aware event map and estimated walk times to and from sessions will help you plan your day more effectively, ensuring you don’t miss out on any valuable content.
Your Feedback In Action
Thank you for your valuable feedback about ways to improve the schedule experience! We're excited to share, that based on your suggestions, we've added the ability to filter your session favorites, a feature already been launched at other Esri events this year. Your input is making a difference!
Survey Highlights
- Fulfillment levels increase among both in-person and digital attendees year-over-year
- "No" responses to the fullfillment question in 2024 are <2% and have also decreased significantly year-over-year
- The digital format has shown significant improvement, suggesting that feedback from previous years was effectively implemented
Survey Highlight
Some of the event offerings you were most excited about received the highest satisfaction ratings in the Post-UC Survey. This alignment reaffirms our commitment to focusing on what matters most to you.
Fatemeh Shayesteh, Senior CX Researcher at Esri, conducted in-depth ethnographic research by closely observing and interacting with attendees as they used the event directory kiosks at UC. This research aimed to gather critical insights into how attendees navigate through the event space and identify opportunities to enhance the overall wayfinding experience.
Through real-time user observations, Fatemeh identified challenges and successes with the kiosks, highlighting areas for interface improvement that designers and engineers are currently addressing for future events,
There’s nothing quite like interacting with customers in their natural environment to truly understand their behaviors, needs, and pain points in real-world contexts. That’s why I reached out to several attendees, asking for their permission to observe their interactions with the indoor map kiosks and discuss their experiences using these maps. Their participation directly contributes to making the event experience smoother for future attendees.
Fatemeh Shayesteh, Senior CX Researcher
Fatemeh would like to express her sincere gratitude to each and every one of you who took time out of your busy conference schedules to stop and share your valuable feedback!
Photos shared by participants of the 2024 Esri UC Daily Survey. Thank you for sharing your experience!
Your Survey Participation Worldwide
Top 10 Countries by Response Count (Excluding the U.S.) SOURCE: Pre-UC Survey
As we geared up for the UC, you shared your feedback from 125 countries around the globe.
Did You know?
The Pre-UC survey is translated into 39 different languages to enable UC registered attendees to share their feedback in their preferred language. This year, we saw double the number of countries represented by survey respondents than in 2023 and 6% of all survey responses were submitted in a total of 27 non-English languages!
You submitted 6,680 survey responses over five months! 467 Esri staff reviewed your ~14K open-text comments and have already started incorporating your feedback into our work.
Did You know?
The Pre-UC Survey measures attendee satisfaction with Esri business areas and technology, but also seeks to understand your goals for attending UC. This year we saw a staggering 62% percentage increase in response rate! Thank you for your feedback as it helps us improve!
You're eager to take advantage of new features when upgrades become available. More focus on software quality and performance for new releases, particularly ArcGIS Pro, will reduce crashes, improve performance, and minimize bugs that are hindering your productivity.
Your Feedback In Action
Product feedback, like yours, contributes to the ongoing improvement of Esri software with each passing year. Kory Kramer, Product Manager for ArcGIS Pro, shares about Esri's committment to software quality and performance,
We're dedicated to continually improving the quality, performance and usability of ArcGIS Pro. While we run more than 150,000 automated tests daily, we might not catch something. In those cases, we encourage you to let us know - whether it's investigating an issue with Technical Support, submitting an error report through the software, adding your idea to ArcGIS Ideas, or suggesting a documentation improvement through the feedback link at the bottom of every help page, there are many ways to engage with us. Don't wait for a survey - get in touch whenever you want. We're listening!
Kory Kramer, Product Manager of ArcGIS Pro
Prioritizing Quality
- To address and improve those frustrating 999999 errors in ArcGIS Pro, nearly half of all error related bugs reported through Technical Support will be fixed with the release of ArcGIS Pro 3.4. Keep an eye out for even more fixes, as the ArcGIS Pro team continues to prioritize error related bugs!
- When you submit an error report with an email address, the development team confirms whether there's a fix for the issue in an existing release. If so, you'll receive an email encouraging you to install the appropriate software updates.
Focusing on Performance
- In addition to a continuous focus on software performance, the ArcGIS Pro team makes regular updates to resources like the Diagnostic Monitor and documents in Esri Community . Users can confirm they're meeting system requirements and fix performance issues without a call to Technical Support.
You value Esri Technical Support and the friendly commitment from analysts to resolve issues. Increased focus on faster response times, analyst knowledge, and reduced need for case escalations will improve perceived variability in support quality.
Your Feedback In Action
Hear from Dustin Hobbs, Senior Operations Manager of Technical Support, to learn about how the Technical Support leadership team is working to address your feedback,
We’re listening—actively listening. In a response from the 2023 Pre-UC Survey, a customer shared their frustrations about being transferred and escalated to resolve issues. After speaking with them on the phone, my curiosity was sparked about how to improve this experience for all customers. This ultimately led to the development of a new quality assurance program in Support. We’ve also created a new career pathway for our analysts, emphasizing their technical depth and breadth to better support you. We value your feedback and will continue working towards an even more consistent support experience.
Dustin Hobbs, Senior Operations Manager of Technical Support
Prioritizing Support Quality
- Esri Technical Support is launching a dedicated quality assurance program aimed at measuring, tracking, and enhancing global support quality. This program will empower Support leadership to identify themes and patterns related to quality based on feedback received throughout the support process, allowing for quicker and more agile responses.
- We’ve listened to your feedback regarding gaps in knowledge, and the Conversational AI Chatbot for Support will enable analysts to assist you more effectively. Be sure to check it out for yourself on the support website and the support mobile app !
Aligning With Your Work
- Support leadership is currently working on a new career pathway for analysts to expand depth of technical knowledge through a multi-level training approach. The goal of this pathway is to create support experiences for you that require fewer transfers and escalations.
You value the robustness, reliability, and ongoing innovation of Esri products. To effectively showcase the value of ArcGIS within your organization, you recognize the importance of staying up to date on the latest functionalities and best practices. However, you find the learning curve can be steep and ask for resources to help you adopt new workflows more effectively.
Your Feedback In Action
Hear from Ismael Chivite, Principal Senior Product Manager, to learn about how Esri plans to make your ArcGIS Help experience more effective, using your feedback received in the AI in ArcGIS Survey,
The power of GIS can only be realized through your own creativity and expertise. Our mission in Esri would not be complete without a constant effort to help our users understand the potential of ArcGIS software. We hear it all the time: every time we make it easier for you to use and learn about ArcGIS, the impact of your work multiplies. The AI in ArcGIS survey highlighted great opportunities to streamline everyday GIS workflows using Generative AI. Development teams throughout Esri are working hard to transform your ideas into practical AI assistants: To help you navigate the documentation through natural language, create SQL, Arcade expressions and Python code, and even to streamline map styling and app creation. Thanks for all your suggestions. We will soon introduce opportunities for Early Adopters to try these new ideas and with your help, we will make GIS easier and more powerful for everyone.
Ismael Chivite, Principal Senior Product Manager
Did you know?
In addition to the UC surveys, the Esri CX team partners with the Product team to distribute surveys that help prioritize research and development work for the future. Earlier this year, 1,000 of you provided your feedback about which areas of your GIS work might benefit from future AI capabilities. If you haven't yet, take the survey now to share your thoughts. We'd love to hear from you!
Jack Dangermond, President of Esri
Jack personally reads your comments
Jack read 1,476 comments received from you in the Pre-UC Survey this year. You expressed thanks for the opportunity to attend UC and for Esri's contributions to your professional lives, the GIS industry, the environment, and the world! You also shared your thoughts about ways Esri can improve.
Photo by Matt Thomas, San Diego Padres
Exciting News: Get Ready for an Unforgettable Thursday Night Party at Petco Park!
We’re thrilled to announce that your voices have been heard! Thanks to your valuable feedback shared in a recent survey, the 2025 Esri User Conference Thursday Night Party will be held at Petco Park, recognized as one of America’s most beautiful ballparks and home to the San Diego Padres!
Get ready for an unforgettable private event filled with fun! We look forward to seeing you in San Diego in 2025!
*There will not be a baseball game during the party.
Nick Frunzi, Chief Customer Officer
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts in our UC surveys. I hope this report highlights how your feedback helps us to prioritize our work. Your input not only shapes the User Conference but also influences our business decisions year-round.
