How to Run Live Polls in Webex Meetings?

With the growing culture of remote working for a couple of years, the use of web and video conferencing tools have also been increased to a large extent. It would not be wrong to say that the remote working setting has been going well because of the ability to connect with team members and clients in any part of the world through online meetings and video conferences.

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Studies suggest that around 80% of the workers say that they have experienced improved real-time communication while working remotely with the help of web and video conferencing tools. With the help of these digital ways to connect to your team members and clients, you can easily carry on the work with the same pace and determination like you do being in the office.

In a survey by Atlassian, 76% of remote workers stated that remote working improved their focus on the work, and they would love to work from home, especially when they are doing an important task of their job. But how do you know that your employees are focused on the matter of discussions whenever you arrange an online meeting, webinar, or town hall? While an online meeting is going on, it is necessary for you to ensure that the attendees are actually attentive in the sessions. One of the best ways is Live Polls.

While companies and corporate professionals realized the benefits of remote working, web conferencing tools have also upgraded themselves to empower communication and connectivity between the corporate professionals. In the same spirit, Webex rolled out Embeddable Apps — where external Apps can be accessed by meeting hosts and attendees within the Webex App itself, without leaving the meeting interface at all.

Zonka teamed up with Webex to roll out an integrated solution as a part of Webex's Embedded Apps — Zonka for Webex. With Zonka for Webex, Webex users can easily create and send any surveys, polls, and quizzes with Zonka Feedback during their Webex meetings.

Read: 8 Ways to use Zonka for Webex

This article will talk about how you can run live polls in an ongoing Webex meeting without needing to switch between the apps and break the flow. Before we go ahead, let’s understand what Live Polls are and how they benefit by making your Webex meetings more engaging and successful.

What are Live Polls?

A Live Poll is a voting survey where audiences are asked certain questions with some options provided to them to vote for one as the response to the question. In Live Polls, responses are collected from the audience in real-time, and the results can also be displayed at the moment.

When we talk about online meetings and video conferences, live polls are an effective way to communicate with the attendees and know their opinion regarding any discussion and decision.

Why Need Live Polls?

Live Polling is an excellent way to interact with your meeting attendees during an online meeting. It not only establishes an effective two-way communication between the host and the meeting attendees but also helps you to make your meetings more engaging and maintain the interests and concentration of the attendees. It is great for taking democratic decisions and involving everyone in the decision-making. It's also a great way to break the ice. 

It is a quick and easy way to communicate with all the meeting attendees at once and give them an opportunity to share their views and opinions. Polls ensure audience participation in the web sessions and let you know the level of their understanding regarding the content presented to them. Let's explore some benefits of Live Polling to realize its importance.

Let's learn more about these benefits.

1. It helps to organize Voting for Choices

The most significant benefit of a Poll is that that it helps to organize voting among the masses. Whenever you want to select an alternative amongst the various available ones as per the choice of the majority of your audience, you can use Live Polls to know their preferences.

With Live Polls, you can provide options to your meeting attendees and ask them to choose the one they support and get to know what they want. You can do this during an ongoing meeting or webinar and announce the voting results of the poll at the same time.

2. It helps to know the opinion of your meeting Attendees

3. It helps to make effective decisions

When you get to know the opinion of all your meeting attendees regarding any decision, you tend to make more effective decisions. Whether it is choosing among various plans or strategies, deciding to designate staff for a project, prioritizing your projects, or deciding to go ahead with a task or decision, Polling helps you know the insights of all your attendees and help you make better decisions. These decisions are those that majority of your people agree to go ahead with. If you are looking to conduct due diligence before making important business decisions, using a due diligence data room can help you securely share and access sensitive information with stakeholders during virtual meetings.

4. It helps to increase engagement in meetings

Studies suggest that 48% of the millennial working population engage below average in corporate townhalls, and 32% of them participate unwillingly. Polls can help you deal with this problem. They not only let you know the opinion of your meeting attendees but also help you make your meetings more exciting and engaging for the attendees.

For making your online meetings and conferences more engaging, you can also conduct icebreaker polls to make it more interesting and comfortable for your attendees to share their thoughts. Ranging from funny ice breaker questions to the ice breaker questions to know each other, you can use different types of Poll Questions to break the ice and make your meetings more engaging.

5. It allows the attendees to give anonymous opinions

There may be instances where your employees or attendees are not comfortable sharing their opinions in front of many people in the open. But with Live Polls, you can give them an option to share their views anonymously. Anonymous Polls allow them to share their feelings without fear of getting mocked or embarrassed.

6. It helps you make democratic decisions

Democracy is a part of healthy working culture, and Polls are a great way to induce democracy in the working environment. Whenever you want to take an important decision in which you want to include your employees to express their views and take part in decision-making, you can ask your employees to provide their opinion as to go ahead with a plan or not, decide a strategy among various alternative strategies available, or select a person or team to assign a certain task.

With Live Polls during Webex meetings, you get the exact number as to how many people voted for which decision to go ahead with, and you can choose that decision for which majority of your employees have voted. In this way, you can make democratic decisions for your business and create a healthy work culture. 

How to Run Live Polls in Webex?

Running Live Polls is not a complex task for Webex users. With Zonka for Webex, you can easily conduct live polls during your Webex meetings and live online sessions. Let's learn the steps of creating live polls in your Webex meetings.

1. Get Started Zonka for Webex

For creating Live Polls, the first step is to get started with Zonka for Webex. You can easily find Zonka Feedback in the embedded Apps of Webex and login or sign up for Zonka for Webex quickly from there. As you log in to Zonka for Webex, it offers you features to create live polls, surveys, and quizzes.

2. Create Polls - Add Questions

When you get the option of creating live surveys, polls, and quizzes, you can choose to create Live Polls during your Webex meetings. With Zonka for Webex, you can easily create Polls with the help of its ready-to-use templates. In these templates, you can add, remove or modify the questions to create the Poll type of your choice and as per your requirements. You can also choose to create a fresh Poll Survey from scratch.

Learn: How to Create Poll Questions in Webex?

3. Present Polls to the attendees to collect responses

When you have included the questions you want to ask to your attendees and created a poll, you can present them to your attendees and ask them to respond to the poll questions. As they answer the poll questions, you will receive the responses in real-time. You can also set alerts and notifications of receiving poll responses.

4. Analyze Poll results during Webex Meetings

When you have got all the responses, Zonka for Webex also helps you to analyze them. You can view the poll responses as charts and graphs and easily explore which option has how many votes or the percentage of votes. Now, you can also easily present the poll results to your audience in the same ongoing meeting, or you can also choose to keep them anonymous with you, as per your needs.

You can follow these steps while you and your attendees are in the same meeting without breaking the flow of the Webex meeting. Now, let's also explore some best practices you should follow while running Polls to make the most out of them.

Let's know how you can follow these tips to make the most out of Live Polls during the Webex Meetings:

1. Be Clear about the objectives of Polling

Whenever you are running live polls, make it clear to yourself and your meeting attendees about the purpose and objectives of organizing the polls. Whether it is to make a decision, test your employees' or students' knowledge, break the ice, or just kill the boredom of your meetings of long hours, tell your attendees clear what you want to achieve by organizing the poll.

Before presenting the poll questions to your attendees, you must announce in the meeting the reason for having Polls and motivate your attendees to take part in Polls and give their valuable opinions.

2. Select your Poll Questions wisely

When choosing questions for your polls, select your poll questions wisely. Do not ask confusing questions from the attendees, and do not ask questions they may be uncomfortable to respond to. Even if you have fun Polls as an icebreaker, do take care not to ask too personal questions or anything that your attendees may not feel good talking about.

3. Keep the names of the voters anonymous

One of the best practices to follow while conducting Polls is to keep the respondents' identities anonymous. There may be instances where a decision is being made, and there may be some attendees who don't want to support it but are not comfortable opposing it. In such cases, you can ask Yes/No questions to know about your attendees' opinions about going ahead with the decision.

4. Share overall Poll results with attendees

You may choose to keep the Poll results with yourself, but it is ideal to share them with your attendees. When the attendees have participated in the Poll, they should know their opinion matches with how many more people are amongst the audience. Otherwise, they may also lose interest in voting in the Polls next time.

5. Consider Poll results while making decisions

Another best practice is to take the poll results seriously and consider the poll results while making decisions. If you do not consider poll results, you ignore your attendees' opinions, which defeats the entire purpose of conducting polls. Whereas, if you make decisions as per your poll results, your attendees will feel heard and actively participate in the polls next time.