Jan 30, 2020
This is Part II of a series that will outline the different ways we can adjust and tailor our answering service system to meet the needs of funeral and death care related organizations. In Part I, we examined how ASD supports casket and vault companies. In Part II, we will explore how ASD helps cemeteries and mausoleums.
“I’m just a vendor, so I don’t think I can use your services.”
Believe it or not, the sentence above has resulted in countless invaluable conversations and relationships between ASD and other funeral-related businesses. At conventions around the country, the ASD team is often given the opportunity to meet fellow exhibitors and learn about different organizations that contribute to funeral service. Many are very surprised to learn about the numerous ways our answering service can be customized to meet their specific needs. This is part of our company’s commitment to providing communication options and solutions to the entire death care profession. We can adjust and tailor our answering service system to meet the needs of funeral and death care related organizations.
In addition to funeral homes, ASD also serves funeral-related businesses and organizations such as casket suppliers, mortuary science colleges and transport companies. If you work in any field related to death care and receive phone calls, ASD has a solution in place for you. Recently, we introduced an enhanced version of our message system that gives our clients the ability to fully customize how information is obtained from callers. Drop down lists, conditional information fields, and special instructions can now easily be added to our message templates. This unrivaled functionality allows you to control the entire trajectory of any call we handle for you and oversee how message details are organized.
Support for Cemeteries and Mausoleums
ASD works with hundreds of cemeteries and mausoleums nationwide. Many of these are owned by clients who also have a funeral home business ASD supports. For these accounts, we utilize a special setting that our Call Specialists are trained to recognize as a funeral home and cemetery combination. Specific preferences for handling funeral home calls and cemetery calls are clearly defined on the account. Our Call Specialists learn how to differentiate calls for the funeral home and calls for the cemetery and to dispatch messages accordingly. They become familiarized with the proper terminology so they can easily identify and categorize each call. For instance, ASD operators are well aware that purchasing a cemetery plot in advance is not the same as creating a prearranged funeral policy.
ASD’s Custom Message Templates allow our cemetery clients to fully customize how their calls are labeled and screened by ASD Call Specialists. ASD’s systems allow us to document what type of cemetery calls are deemed urgent. When taking a call for a cemetery or mausoleum, ASD Call Specialists will identify the message type based on the account’s customizable settings. The message label will include a note if the call should be dispatched immediately or marked as a routine message.
An example of a cemetery’s customizable message settings. In this example, the cemetery has specified that all messages regarding requests from funeral homes, ground emergencies, alarm activations or lock ins should be dispatched without delay.
ASD’s Custom Messaging also allows for conditional information fields based on how the call is labeled. For instance, one of our cemetery clients instructs that if a family calls to schedule a burial, a conditional information will then appear that requires our Call Specialist to obtain the name of the Funeral Home providing the funeral services. The same cemetery also instructs ASD to provide callers looking for a grave location with a website address where they can look up burial records in the cemetery. This is just one example of how a cemetery or mausoleum can customize and tailor their call handling procedures with ASD.
Using an answering service for your funeral-related business is a simple solution that can prevent missed calls, overlooked orders and lost clients. As we all know, the funeral profession is unlike any other. The 24/7 demands coupled with the short timeframe to plan a service and final disposition require directors to work only with the most responsive organizations. Automated systems are no longer enough to meet the needs of this profession as they so often cause frustration, unnecessary delays and misunderstandings. As the answering service trusted by more than 7,000 funeral homes across the United States, ASD is the only company with the training and technology solutions in place to help funeral related businesses of all kinds enhance their communications to better serve the funeral profession.
Still not convinced? We offer a 30-Day no-risk FREE TRIAL for all of our new clients so you can test out all of our technology, including our Custom Messaging Templates, to decide if we are a good fit for your business. To learn more, email Sales@myASD.com or call 800-868-9950 and ask for Craig.
RELATED READING:
How ASD’s Custom Messaging Supports Casket and Vault Companies
14 Funeral Home Success Stories that Demonstrate ASD’s Customizable Systems
17 MORE Funeral Home Success Stories That Underline the Benefits of Answering Service Customization
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
