Live Sessions

Run live 1:1 interviews and focus groups as part of a survey to capture qualitative depth, with recording, transcription, and AI summaries.

Overview

Live Sessions turn a survey into a qualitative research tool. Instead of only collecting typed answers, you can meet respondents in a live, browser-based video or audio call to hear their thinking in their own words. Live Sessions are a mode inside the classic survey builder, so everything you already know about targeting, screening, and funding still applies.

Use Live Sessions when you need depth rather than scale. Numbers from a quantitative survey tell you what people think; a live conversation tells you why. They are ideal for concept testing, usability walkthroughs, exploring motivations, and any topic where a follow-up question reveals more than a fixed answer option could.

There are two formats:

1:1 interviews (IDI): a single respondent talks with you one-on-one. Best for sensitive topics, detailed personal experiences, and deep individual insight.
Focus groups: several respondents join the same session so you can observe discussion and how opinions shift in a group.

Adding a Live Session to a Survey

You choose whether a survey includes a Live Session at the very first step of the wizard, in Basics. You can build a survey that is:

Questions only (a normal survey, unchanged).
Questions plus a live session.
A live session only, with no main questions beyond an optional screener.

When you include a live session, a Live Sessions stage appears in the wizard. There you configure:

Format: 1:1 interview or focus group. For a focus group you also set the number of seats per session.
Session length: how long each session runs, chosen from preset lengths or entered directly.
Number of sessions: how many respondents you want to speak with in total (for a focus group, this is expressed through seats).

Session length, format (1:1 versus group), and question timing become locked once the first respondent books a session. The wizard and the publish confirmation warn you about this, so set them carefully before you go live.

Scheduling and Time Slots

Respondents pick a time that suits them, so you do not have to coordinate calendars by hand.

For 1:1 interviews, you define your weekly availability and the platform derives bookable time slots from it. You can add specific date-range overrides, set buffers between sessions, and cap how many sessions happen per day.
For focus groups, you set explicit session date and times, and respondents book a seat in one of them.

You control a booking window so respondents book within a sensible period. Every time is shown to each respondent in their own local timezone, in 12-hour AM/PM format, so there is no confusion about when to show up. If two people try to grab the same slot at once, only one booking succeeds and the other respondent is offered a fresh list of open times.

The Companion Questionnaire

A live session can be paired with structured questions, the same question types you would use in any survey. You decide when respondents answer them relative to the call:

Pre-session: respondents answer the questions first, then book and attend. This is useful for warming up context or capturing baseline data before the conversation.
Post-session: respondents attend the session first, then complete the questions afterward, for example to rate the experience or record structured takeaways.

The companion questionnaire is optional. A live-session survey can run with just a screener and no other questions if all you need is the conversation. You can also keep a private discussion guide for your own use during the call; it is never shown to respondents.

Live Sessions are recorded so you can revisit the conversation and so it can be analyzed later. Respondents are told clearly, before they book, that the session is recorded, and they give explicit consent to recording as part of confirming their booking. Nothing is hidden.

After a session ends, its recording is automatically transcribed so you can read, search, and analyze what was said without watching every minute of footage. Recordings and transcripts are kept private to you as the survey creator and are accessed through your dashboard behind your login, never through public or expiring links.

Because recording is part of the agreement respondents accept when booking, the "what you need" and consent details are presented up front. This keeps expectations clear and attendance rates high.

Incentives and Payment

Respondents earn an incentive for completing a session, on top of any reward tied to the survey's questions. Payment is designed to be fair to both sides:

The full reward is released only when a respondent completes everything that applies to them. For a pre-session survey that means answering the questions and attending the session; for a post-session survey it means attending and then finishing the follow-up questions.
In some cases the incentive is split, so part is settled for attending and the remainder once the respondent finishes any remaining step.

While a respondent still has parts left to complete, their pending earnings are shown as such so they know exactly what is left to unlock the full reward.

Funding

Funding a live-session survey works through the same Rewards stage as any other survey. You set a single target for the number of respondents you want to complete everything, and the wizard shows one itemized cost card covering the question reward, the session incentive, and the platform session fee for each respondent, multiplied by your target. You fund it in one action from your credit balance.

The target is a single number: it counts respondents who complete every part. If you need more sessions later, you can raise the target after publishing, which tops up the budget at the rates locked in when you first funded. See Survey Lifecycle for how funding, pausing, and closing work across states.

What Respondents See

The respondent journey is guided and hard to get wrong:

They receive an invite and open the survey preview, which states up front that it includes a live session and that the full reward comes only after the session is completed.
If there is a screener, they answer it and find out instantly whether they qualify.
Qualified respondents pick a time slot (or a focus-group seat) in their own timezone.
They confirm the booking and agree to the recording and booking rules.
They get calendar and reminder notifications, then join the session directly from a link in a browser, with no complicated setup.
Once everything that applies is done, the reward lands in their wallet.

For a pre-session survey, submitting the questions leads straight to a "now schedule your session" step rather than the usual completion screen, so respondents always know the next thing to do.

Reviewing Results

Everything appears in your survey's analytics dashboard alongside your other results. See Survey Analytics for the full dashboard.

Overview: session stat cards join your existing metrics, including sessions completed, upcoming, and cancelled, attendance rate, total and average session minutes, and how much of your budget is funded, reserved, spent, and remaining.
Sessions tab: a list of every session with the respondent, scheduled and actual times, and status. From each row you can watch or download the recording, view or download the transcript, and open the moderator join link for upcoming sessions.
AI summary: you can generate a cross-session summary that reads the transcripts and pulls the themes and takeaways together into one narrative, so you do not have to synthesize dozens of conversations by hand. It is credit-priced by usage, and pricing is shown before you confirm.
Companion questionnaire data: answers from the pre- or post-session questions appear in the Questions tab and exports just like any other survey answers, so you can combine structured data with what you heard in the room.
Exports: CSV and PDF exports include per-session rows and session statistics, and the PDF can include the qualitative narrative once you have generated the summary.

Live Sessions vs Surveys vs Polls

Polls capture a single quick opinion from a large audience. Fastest and broadest, least detail. See Polls.
Surveys collect structured answers across many questions from many respondents. Great for measuring and comparing at scale.
Live Sessions trade breadth for depth. You speak with fewer people but learn far more from each one, and you get recordings, transcripts, and AI summaries to make sense of it.

A single survey can combine structured questions with a live session, giving you measurable data and qualitative depth from the same respondents.