How does it work?
A question is shown to the audience, usually using your meeting's display screen at the front of the room. Each person in the audience holds a wireless keypad and presses the button that corresponds to his or her desired answer choice. Since the questions are formatted as multiple choice, true/false, yes/no, etc., any answer can be chosen by pressing one of the keypad buttons. The answers are collected in a few seconds, and then the result is shown on the same display screen, usually in the form of a bar graph or pie chart, showing the breakdown of how everyone answered the question. This sequence then repeats itself throughout your presentation as desired.

How long does the audience have to answer a question?
That's entirely up to you. An on-screen clock can indicate the amount of time you've specified for the vote, or you can leave the vote open until you decide to close it.

How much does it cost?
Audience response services operated by professional technicians start at a few thousand dollars and the price increases as you use more keypads over more days.
Beware of low price providers. When it comes to audience response you get what you pay for. Experience of the opearator and quality, flexible software that runs independently of the speaker's presentation are the key to your event's success.

If you're purchasing a system, consider that keypads that use coin cell batteries might cost you much more (in the long run) than their purchase price due to frequent battery changes! Coin cells have very little stored energy and have a very short shelf life. Typically, you will be replacing coin cell batteries about every six months, compared to every 2-3 years for the AAA type.
Make sure that the keypads you're going to buy can be turned off - not just put to 'sleep' mode and that they don't have buttons that get accidentally pressed during transport.

How many people can I have in the audience using the polling system?
Professional audience response systems can handle everything from very small focus groups of a few people to large conventions of several thousand and even multiple-location satellite meetings that link many audiences into one virtual audience. If the system you need requires a large number of keypads, make sure you hire a company with a proven record of large group usage.

Ask about a proof of vote COUNT and ACCURACY, not just relative percentage of votes received!

Will I encounter interference with cell phones or wireless microphones?
You will not have problems with Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum Base Controlled Keypads. These keypads are designed to operate in the same environment as other devices.

Single frequency keypads already cannot communicate with their receiver all at the same time, but the problem is even more pronounced when other devices are using the same frequencies as they do. These keypads can be blocked by the simplest Wi-Fi networks and/or bluetooth headsets, keyboards, mice, mobile phones and other devices.