Mar 28, 2018
When you became a funeral director, you didn’t sign away your
freedom. Yet, sometimes it feels that way, doesn’t it? The physical and mental
costs add up when your schedule is so unpredictable and your workload feels
like feast or famine. But while it may be true that you must remain available
to your community 24/7, you don’t have to do it alone. Give yourself the best
advantage by empowering your funeral home with back up protection, proven
technology and NFDA award-winning resources. Using an answering service isn’t
about losing control – it’s about gaining added peace of mind and support
during those times when you really need it
.
We understand directors
often have many
questions to consider before trusting an outside company to
handle their sensitive and valuable calls. We wanted to take a moment to
explain some of the benefits our funeral director clients have gained from
using ASD and why it is vital for funeral homes to protect their sensitive
phone calls.
Advantages of Using an Answering
Service
Funeral professionals are pulled in so many different
directions. There is little predictability in their lives, as death does not
follow any schedule. An answering service can provide directors with much
needed freedom from the demands of an on-call lifestyle, allowing them to
remain unshackled from the phone without sacrificing the level of service
families receive. Funeral homes benefit from back up support, call screening
and time to recharge. These benefits empower directors to better serve families
by offering more responsive customer service and spending more time engaging in
their communities.
With an answering service, calls can be forwarded as often or
as a little as needed. This flexibility offers increased revenue and
efficiency, giving owners an alternative to overstaffing. Directors can
decrease their overhead costs while freeing up employees to complete other
tasks. The funeral home also benefits from having more energized and empowered
staff as employees are only being contacted after hours when an urgent need is
communicated to an answering service. Even employees who are never on-call
benefit from improved inner office communication and solutions that help
everyone at the funeral home remain on the same page.
With so many tasks to juggle, having an extra hand when you need it can make all the difference.
The Unique Nature of Funeral Home
Phone Calls
The sensitive nature of the funeral business coupled with the
substantial cost of a single sale requires directors to be hyper vigilant of
all communication. The telephone is almost always the first point of contact
for at-need families and can play a vital role in a customer’s first impression
of a funeral home. If a family calls a funeral home during their time of
need and hears a busy signal, voicemail or worse, the phone just rings and
rings, it is highly likely they will contact a different firm and tell others
about their negative experience. By creating a safety net of backup support
through
call forwarding and an answering service, funeral professionals can
ensure families always receive a prompt and professional response no matter the
time or day.
There is no substitute for attentiveness when you’re a
funeral professional. Directors must remain focused on the families they are
serving to ensure they always feel supported. Using or checking a phone during
a memorial service or an arrangement conference could be construed as
insensitive or impolite to others. This is especially true when interacting
with older generations who did not grow up with cellular technology and often
view it as an unnecessary distraction. With an answering service, funeral
professionals can direct their undivided attention to the family in front of
them without fear of an important missed call. This empowers directors to stay
connected discreetly without being repeatedly interrupted by a phone call.
Both prompt attention and specialized support are needed when assisting funeral home callers.
In the funeral business, you only get one chance to serve a
family correctly. Knowing how delicate and involved these calls are, only an
answering service with an
absolute focus
on
funeral professionals can consistently meet these extreme needs. ASD recognized
early funeral directors had unique needs and required a more caring,
specialized answering service to handle their calls. Working solely with
funeral homes ensures our staff has a deeper comprehension of the fragile
emotional state of callers and possesses a higher level of understanding of
funeral customs and traditions. Our dedication to improving the lives of
funeral directors extends beyond answering calls: we want to equip funeral
directors with the communications tools they need to better serve families and
maintain a competitive advantage.
It’s Not About Losing Control. It’s
About Gaining Peace of Mind
Funeral
directors are required to be control freaks (we like to call them “control
experts”). Their vocation demands it. Every detail must be weighed and measured
when you are constantly dealing with such fragile emotions and time-sensitive
issues. Consequently, many directors are reluctant to forward their phone lines to
an answering service because they believe they are offering better customer
service to families by answering every call themselves. While it is certainly
admirable to want to be there to support every family who calls, backup
protection is crucial. Without it, a single missed call could cost a funeral
home the trust of a family they have worked with generations.
In order to be responsive to families in need and
competitive, directors need to have a communication safeguard in place. Funeral
homes that use call forwarding and an answering service maintain an advantage
over other firms simply because their clients can always reach them. Situations
will inevitably arise that prevent critical calls from getting through. If
power is lost at the funeral home or a receptionist cannot answer the line in
time, there is no way to account for potential lost business. Directors can
easily and affordably set up
call forwarding preferences through their local
phone company ensuring that if the phones are out of service or the line is not
answered by a predetermined number of rings, calls automatically divert to
their answering service.
With No Answer Call Forwarding programmed and ASD backing up your phone lines, you’ll never have to worry about missing an important phone call again.
For funeral professionals that routinely forward to their
cell phones, there are many outside variables that can impact their ability to
professionally and compassionately serve families. If the cell phone loses
service or the battery dies, the director may not even realize they have missed
a call until the family has already moved on to a different firm. If more than
one person calls during the same time period, the director is then forced to
interrupt their conversation and place the caller on hold or ignore the
incoming call that could be urgent. If a person calls when the director is in a
loud environment, the family may hear inappropriate background noise,
Additionally, if a director answers his phone while in transit, he puts himself
at risk from distracted driving. These unpredictable occurrences can cause a
great deal of frustration for both funeral professionals and families, yet they
can be easily avoided by using an answering service.
Achieving a Competitive Advantage
Most funeral home marketing efforts are centered on
convincing families to call their funeral home during their time of need.
However, this strategy will not help to grow the funeral home business if
directors have not considered a competitive approach for handling shopper
calls. Families will frequently contact multiple funeral homes to compare
packages, research available options and evaluate customer service. At ASD, our Call Specialists
can discern a normal message from a
shopper call and will connect the on-call
director to these callers to provide assistance without delay. This ensures the
director is not trying to track down the family after the fact while the family
is calling other funeral homes. With a quick tap within
ASD Mobile, the
director can even
join the call in progress in real-time, as if picking up a
second line at the funeral home. This provides families with immediate
assurance that their needs are a high priority and allows directors to offer a
more personal touch.
Many funeral
home owners have little to no way of reviewing how their staff handles
challenging shopper calls that occur after hours. With the right answering
service, this dilemma can now be solved. ASD gives funeral home owners the
ability to review shopper calls that are directly patched to their staff,
allowing them to listen to the complete recording of the call even after the
ASD Call Specialist disconnects. On-call directors can also call any number
through the ASD Mobile app and have the call recorded and available for future
review. This solution allows funeral home owners and their staff to develop a
consistent approach when handling shopper calls.
“The ASD Mobile app has made my life so much easier as a whole but the real star is this feature. The fact that it records the calls you make is wonderful, especially when a family may complain about something they claim we never talked about. It really helps to be able to go back and reference the call.”-Amy Rigtrup, Silva Faria Funeral Home
With this technology, funeral home owners now have an
opportunity to understand what techniques work best during shopper calls, discover
areas that can be improved upon, and develop best practices. Call recordings
can be used as
training tools to help employees develop more effective sales
strategies to reach goals. Every
funeral home employee brings a different set of skills to the table and some
directors may be better at handling these calls than others. Listening to recordings of
shopper calls can help funeral home owners to assist their staff with refining
their communication and improving their confidence. Furthermore, if any vital
information is transcribed inaccurately during the call, the funeral home will
have a complete record of the director’s conversation with the family member
that can be accessed anytime.
Importance of Customizable Options and
Specialized Training
Every funeral
home has a unique history, business culture and relationship with the public.
Since no two funeral homes are exactly alike, it is not possible for a funeral
vendor to effectively serve such a diverse group without offering customizable
options. ASD’s approach is truly listening to what funeral directors
tell us they need, understanding how they operate and figuring out how we can
help them accomplish their goals with available and emerging
technologies—things they might not even know exist. This tailored approach was
created with the knowledge that funeral directors are unlike any other
profession and deserve specialized solutions.
For
example, ASD has created an experienced team of more than
30 bilingual Call Specialists to assist funeral homes that handle calls for Spanish-Speaking
families. For funeral homes that utilize an after-hours transport service, we
can gather all of the necessary details on the First Call and set up specific
contacting instructions to help coordinate the removal. From larger, multi-location firms to smaller
funeral homes in rural areas, we have
solutions in place for just about every
size firm and call scenario. Every ASD client
has a designated account with their firm’s unique preferences, instructions and
special notations mapped out clearly for our Call Specialists. This is just
scratching the surface of the many different ways directors can customize their
needs to ensure calls are handled entirely in a manner that reflects the
funeral home’s standards and methods.
ASD Call Specialists receive extensive training on speaking to funeral home callers
Since ASD
answers exclusively for funeral homes, our Call Specialists are never
distracted by calls from doctor’s offices, tow truck drivers and other
businesses unrelated to the funeral profession. The extensive,
6-month training program we have in place strongly emphasizes the significance of First Calls,
Price Shopper calls and Pre-Need inquiries and outlines the burial customs of
different religions, ethnicities and geographic regions. In addition to
exhibiting a compassionate phone demeanor while speaking to at-need families,
trainees must learn how to handle every type of call a funeral home may receive
before answering calls independently. They must also possess intuition to
recognize an at-need call early into a conversation by paying close attention
to the caller’s tone of voice as well as unspoken cues. By keeping our staff
focused solely on the needs of funeral directors, ASD’s staff is better
equipped to speak to families in need and more knowledgeable about the funeral
profession than any other answering service in operation today.
Alleviating On-Call Headaches and
Improving Customer Service
You would
expect that giving out your cell phone number would resolve communication
problems, not create them, but for funeral directors this just isn’t the case. Caller
ID, as helpful as it is, can also cause a lot of headaches and make it
difficult for funeral professionals to keep their personal number private. In
the past, this was unavoidable – families would naturally reference the phone
number they saw on their Caller ID even when that director was no longer on
duty. As a result, callers with time-sensitive needs would often have issues
reaching the funeral home while funeral directors had no option for separating
their personal and professional lives.
Have you ever missed an important, urgent call because the person called your personal cell phone number instead of the funeral home number?
Fortunately, a better solution now
exists that enables directors to call any number from their cell phone using
the funeral home number as the outgoing Caller ID. ASD
introduced this feature, known as
MobileFH® in 2015 and it has since been
awarded an official patent from the U.S. Patent office. With MobileFH®,
families will only see the funeral home’s phone number on their Caller ID,
ensuring they always call back the correct person. Directors can enjoy
their time off without worrying about missing important calls instead of
trying to assist the caller from a distracting environment. On average,
ASD connects about 500 MobileFH® a day. These calls are also recorded by ASD,
allowing funeral directors to review their conversations with families and use
call recordings as training tools to help staff improve communication skills.
ASD offers every funeral home a 30-Day Free Trial that gives you an
opportunity to full evaluate every aspect of our service. We work closely with
you during the trial to learn about your specific needs and document your
customizable preferences. Let us answer your phones for
ABSOLUTELY NO COST during our trial period to prove to you how having flexibility for your
life and protection for your calls can set you free!
Want to learn more? Contact our National Sales Manager, Craig
Meehan, at 800-868-9950 or email
Craig@myASD.com
About The Author
Jess Farren (Fowler)
Jess Farren (Fowler) is a Public Relations Specialist and Staff Writer who has been a part of the ASD team since 2003. Jess manages ASD’s company blog and has been published in several funeral trade magazines. She has written articles on a variety of subjects including communication, business planning, technology, marketing and funeral trends. You can contact Jess directly at Jess@myASD.com