“I would encourage you to reconsider because
there are ways you can find that balance by
providing them what they’re looking for, which is
more information about what you have to offer,
while still having them interact with you and
understand the full benefits of the funeral.”
“You can find that balance,” he continued. “You
don’t necessarily need to have full ordering
on your site, where they’ll pay for everything.
Maybe you just let them find some of the basic
offerings that they might want to choose.
Maybe you give them some of that information
and education about how they should be
thinking about the different options, or you
let them choose some of these options but
then come in to walk through them and to talk
through what they selected before making the
final selections. That’s just providing them that
greater level of service that they’re increasingly
going to expect.”
What Garbow is seeing is a lot of online providers
coming into funeral service markets, whether
they’re physically in your market or not, so you
need to protect against that.
So, how do you really level up and get far
ahead of what everyone else is doing? Garbow
suggests providing personalized products. “The
reason personalized products are so important
today is that surveys with families show that
the personalized products are the number one
thing they take away from that funeral service,”
he said. “It’s the number one thing that they
remember, and they judge your service based on
the personalized products.”
Of course there’s a lot of different personalized
products, such as jewelry and tribute books.
“I’m really passionate about personalization,”
Garbow said. “I think that the best technology
brings together the benefits of digital, but also
parts of the physical.”
Management Software
The main requirement for management software
is that it needs to be accessed anywhere, [...]
because we’re always on the move now. [...] It
just needs to be cloud based, so essentially it is
accessible from the internet. It must also have
a responsive design so it goes from a full screen
on a laptop yet still has a design and an interface
that works from your mobile device.
How do you take that next step and level up
a little bit? Today, funeral directors don’t talk just
about managing cases or managing finances –
what about business management? “That’s going
to save you a tremendous amount of time,”
Garbow said. “If your software can keep track
of who’s cutting the grass; which vehicles are
reserved for which services; can handle texts and
communications and responses to your families;
if it can handle scheduling and communicating
with your staff; if it can even integrate the
weather for the events, then this is where you
start saving hours per case by managing your
entire business using the software.”
How do you really go to the next level with your
management software? Through integrations.
Garbow’s suggestion is to have it do special
things. “It integrates with your website, your
personalized products, your print software or
e-aftercare,” he said. “A lot of families after the
service, they are kind of forgotten, for better
or for worse. You have to move on to the other
families to serve them.”
The problem is those post-service families still
have needs. So, what if you could stay in front of
them for months, or even up to a year afterward,
and provide them with that additional level of
service that they’re looking for? “You can do that
with aftercare and with e-aftercare. By making it
digital, you can do it automatically,” Garbow said.
“You can check in with them and provide them
information, such as death certificates and what
they should do with them. Maybe a couple days
later, you could give them some grief options and
then you follow up with some information about
benefits and financials and what they should be
thinking about.”
“This provides that next level of service and, by
using e-aftercare, you can make it automatic,” he
added. “You just put in their contact information,
set up that schedule of emails and text messages,
and what they should look like and when they
should go out, and it’s all handled automatically.
Families love and appreciate that you take that
next level of support.” The messages might
also include information about planning ahead.
Maybe a couple of months down the road after
the service – when the wound isn’t quite as fresh
but they are still thinking about some of the
challenges that resulted in all the decisions they
made – it might be a good time to say, “How can
I help you?” [...]
THANOS MAGAZINE | No. 102 – SUMMER 2023
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