Purchase ARS hardware

If you plan to use an audience response system often, several times a month, and you have someone who is technically savvy and can be dedicated to the system, you may be a candidate to purchase a system.

Hire ARS Professionals

If your events are infrequent, large, complicated and important, or if you don’t have staff to dedicate to audience response or your staff changes frequently, you should hire a professional audience response service company.

Choose an ARS company

The number one consideration in picking a professional audience response company is how long they have been in business and what keypads do they use. Many companies pop up, purchase low quality keypads, and disappoint their clients when the lack of experience with ARS system disrupts the meeting. Their underpowered equipment will not manage to collect all of the votes, or will not reach everyone in the room.

Software
A very important point in evaluating an audience response service company is what kind of software they use. If they are using software that operates inside PowerPoint, both parties will be too restricted in what they can and cannot do with ARS during the meeting. Hire a company with software that has been designed to have maximum flexibility and can adapt to almost every surprise a live event might bring. ARS software based on PowerPoint is designed for the inexperienced user and very simple, linear presentations. On the other hand, a professional audience response software functions independently of the PowerPoint presentation, thus giving the technician and the speaker the flexibility and maneuverability to perform impromptu tasks regardless of what is happening in front of the audience. It allows for quick, invisible, on-the-fly changes and a perfect, timely execution.

One other problems to look out for is the use of freelance or part time technicians to service your meeting. It takes a long time, sometimes months, to properly train an audience response specialist. People that freelance as audience response technicians don’t operate audience response systems very often. When they are not operating a keypad system they are typically performing video, sound or lighting functions. These duties give them no experience to manage ARS system properly.

Choose the equipment for purchase

Size
If the keypad is too small, the antenna ends up in the user’s hand, dramatically decreasing the keypad's ability to communicate with the receiver. Choose an audience response keypad that extends above the top of your hand.

The very small keypads get lost or carried away very easily. Replacement is expensive. These mini keypads end up on the floor very often and get stepped on. They rarely survive that kind of abuse.

Batteries
Keypads that use coin cell batteries will cost you more in replacement batteries than you paid for the keypad. Coin cells have very little stored energy and have a very short shelf life. Coin cell batteries are not designed for the heavy drain put on them by keypad usage. You will be replacing batteries in keypads that are used moderately in about six months and keypads that are not used very often in less than a year. The coin cell batteries are also harder to find - especially when you need them the most!

Purchase audience response keypads that use AAA or AA batteries. In most cases the batteries will last through their shelf life and will not cost you arm an a leg.

When it comes to RF there are two kinds of wireless keypads: One is the least dependable and inaccurate. It uses a single frequency to send information from the keypad to the receiver. Systems that consist of less than 50 keypads can be used if you give the audience a lot of time to send their votes, anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute. This type of keypad is used in the K12 education environment, because the keypads are cheap and the long voting time seems to be acceptable. Single frequency keypads have no place in the commercial environment. Once this system has more than 50 keypads, its ability to successfully collect votes diminishes with each keypad added to the pool. The problem is that a single frequency cannot handle the traffic generated by larger groups of keypads.

Keypad systems that use Frequency Hoping Spread Spectrum Receiver Controlled technology can handle hundreds of keypads in a single system, can handle up to 500 votes in just 2.5 seconds and can 'listen to' multiple systems in one room. It costs a little more but it is worth it.