Meetings are meant to bring people together, spark ideas, and drive progress — but let’s be honest, not all of them hit the mark. Some run too long, and others leave everyone wondering, “Couldn’t this have been an email?
How do you know whether your meetings are effective? The best strategy is to just ask. Post-meeting survey questions can reveal what’s working and what’s not, so you can fine-tune things for next time.
Here are 25 questions to get you started, plus some tips on using feedback to make your meetings more effective.
A well-designed survey reveals what went well in your last meeting and where there’s room for improvement. These 25 meeting feedback survey questions will give you the insights you need to make the next meeting even better.
Before diving into details, it’s helpful to get a broad sense of how attendees felt about the meeting. Their overall impressions show you if they found the meeting valuable or if it felt like a calendar filler.
To get a general sense of what participants thought of the meeting, try these five questions:
If responses suggest confusion or disengagement, it may be time to rethink your approach. For example, if participants say they aren’t sure why post-mortem meetings are valuable, you may need to communicate more about their purpose upfront or clarify expectations beforehand. Likewise, if attendees indicate they didn’t feel prepared, it could be a sign that you need to share pre-meeting materials or agendas earlier.
Meeting effectiveness questions help you evaluate whether the meeting achieved its intended goals. If you had a specific outcome in mind, this is your chance to check if you achieved it.
Here are five questions to measure effectiveness:
If feedback suggests the meeting didn’t quite meet its objectives, it might be time to examine how you structure meetings. Maybe you need to tighten up your meeting agenda or manage discussions differently. Using this feedback helps you keep future meetings focused and productive so they lead to results.
Employee engagement questions reveal if attendees actively participated and felt invested in the meeting. Engaged employees are more likely to contribute valuable ideas and feel motivated to follow through on action items, so you want your meetings to be as engaging as possible.
Here are five questions that measure engagement:
If the feedback shows low engagement, it might point to issues like uninteresting content, unclear goals, or a lack of opportunities for involvement. You can resolve these issues by offering more interactive elements — like Q&A sessions — or by allotting time for shoutouts or check-ins. You could also encourage more participation by inviting input from everyone rather than just the usual outspoken voices.
Clear communication is key to making sure everyone leaves the meeting on the same page. If the message isn’t clear, it could lead to confusion or mixed interpretations, which can undermine the effectiveness of the meeting.
These five questions show you how well ideas were communicated:
Assessing communication this way helps you identify where breakdowns may have occurred and how to improve information delivery in future meetings. If participants struggled to follow the conversation, it might signal that you didn’t deliver the message in a digestible way. You can use this feedback to adjust your communication strategy — for example, by using more visual aids or providing more opportunities for clarification.
Meetings that drag on or feel like a waste of time are frustrating for everyone involved. On the other hand, if you rush through the meeting, essential discussions might get cut short, and attendees may leave without fully understanding key points or next steps. A well-paced meeting strikes the right balance and keeps people engaged.
These five questions help gauge where your meeting falls on that spectrum:
Asking these questions shows your team that you respect their time and want meetings to be as efficient and valuable as possible. If responses show that attendees felt the meeting was too long or unfocused, you may need to set clearer time limits for the next one or move certain discussions to email or Slack. If attendees indicate that the meeting was too short, you may need to allocate more time for discussion.
Collecting feedback is only useful if you approach it thoughtfully. To get the most out of your post-meeting surveys, follow these best practices:
Manually collecting and organizing questions and feedback is a hassle, and important insights can easily get lost. Fortunately, survey software streamlines the process by keeping responses organized and easy to analyze.
Look for software that allows for anonymous responses, as this encourages more honest feedback. Bonus points if it integrates with tools your team already uses — like Slack or a project management platform — so responding is quick and painless. Or, you can simply attach the survey to your follow-up email after the meeting.
Generic questions lead to generic answers. To get useful feedback, ask clear, specific questions that go beyond, “Did you like this meeting?” Focus on the elements we discussed above — for example, whether the meeting had a clear purpose and was a good use of time. You can also ask Otter AI Chat to generate questions tailored to your meeting’s goals and content.
Additionally, keep in mind that open-ended questions generally lead to deeper insights. You just don’t want to overwhelm respondents by making the survey feel like extra work. Balance open-ended questions with multiple-choice questions and rating scales. These are quicker to answer — and, as a plus, they’re easier to analyze.
If your team tends to ignore survey requests, a little motivation can help. Consider offering small incentives like a coffee shop gift card or entry into a prize drawing. Even non-monetary perks, like giving public shoutouts for participation, encourage engagement.
Not all feedback is easy to swallow, but it’s important to consider it without getting defensive. Approach criticism as an opportunity to make your meetings better, not as a personal attack. Also, look for patterns rather than one-off complaints. If multiple people mention the same issue, it’s probably worth addressing.
The point of gathering feedback is to make meaningful, practical changes to your next meeting. After each meeting, review the responses to your survey and identify at least one change to try out next time. Maybe you need to refine the format or practice better time management — whatever the takeaway, show your team their input matters by actually implementing improvements. Over time, this creates a culture of continuous refinement where meetings become gradually more effective.
It’s never been easier to create effective post-meeting surveys. With Otter, you can easily read summarized notes and key points and use these to craft relevant feedback questions. Plus, Otter AI Chat can help you refine your questions, ensuring you get the most useful insights from your team.
Try Otter today and start running smarter, more productive meetings.