7 Easy Ways to Increase Family Satisfaction At Your Funeral Home

Family satisfaction is at the heart of any successful funeral home.

Happy customers = a thriving funeral business.

It’s a really simple idea, and yet it can be easy to overlook the details of family satisfaction. When things get busy, things can easily go into auto pilot in the family satisfaction department.

As easy it is to leave behind this element of your business, it’s still at the heart of your success.

That’s why we’ve decided to put together 7 tips to re-inspire, re-ignite and refresh you on ways to increase family satisfaction at your funeral home:

 

 

1. Put someone in charge of family satisfaction

 

First things first. Put someone at your funeral home in charge of the overall satisfaction of families. This will make it much easier to manage, measure and improve customer satisfaction for your team. The ownership will empower the person in charge to take initiative and consistently work to expand your customer service at your funeral home. It doesn’t have to be a full-time job, but giving someone that responsibility is a great first step.

 

 

2. Build honest expectations in your marketing

 


One of the biggest offenders of family satisfaction is when services or products don’t match up to expectations created in the marketing of the business. Try and relay honest and clear expectations about your services and prices so that if anything, your families are pleasantly surprised when they do walk through your doors. In the end, it’s about making promises you can keep, especially when speaking directly to a family.

We love Basecamp for the transparency on their website, where they proudly wear their customer satisfaction scores on their sleeve, even if they’re less than perfect. This truly shows a commitment to improvement.


3. Embrace the idea of Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese term often used in workplaces that translates loosely to “constant small improvements”. This idea of continuous improvement is the fuel needed to increase your family satisfaction. Even if your families are happy with your funeral home’s services, there is always room to improve and expand.  

One way to do this is to have monthly meetings with your team on improving family satisfaction. This meeting could be as quick as 30 minutes, where you share different ideas you have for improving your level of service. Just make sure you set goals that will drive you forward, like improving your family satisfaction by 25%, or getting two outstanding testimonials in the next 30 days. Get creative, and don’t forget to…

 

4. Measure, measure, measure

How will you actually increase your family satisfaction if you aren’t measuring your progress? You could use a scoring system that breaks down the different elements of your customer service, like the Google Form below. Keep track of your scores, make adjustments when necessary, and celebrate your wins along the way!

5. Ask for feedback (creatively)

Create a system that encourages every family who walks through your door to leave feedback for you. The average feedback form may not be very inspiring for your families, so try something creative like Kate Spade did below. We like their approach because it’s very conversational and relaxed, rather than overly professional and cold. Be warm and genuine when in your wording, and you might find that your families are more willing to share feedback with you.

 

6. Make social media your best friend

These days, the fastest and easiest ways to interact with your families is through social media. Leverage tools such as Facebook Messenger and Twitter to let your families know that you’re approachable, available, and ready to interact with them! A lot of businesses use Facebook Messenger as their primary way of interacting with their customers, because it’s become a very direct channel over the years. Check out this guide for some tips on using Facebook Messenger for your funeral business.

 

7. Always go the extra mile!

Is there a way you could WOW your families today, that you didn’t try yesterday? The businesses that are obsessed with wow-ing their customers stick around a while for a reason. Put the customer first, and everything else will follow. Need some ideas? We love this epic customer service story from Zappos (via Forbes):

Recently, a newly-married couple were packing up their belongings in preparation for moving. The husband packed his wife’s jewelry inside one of her purses, and packed the purse inside what he thought was a spare Zappos box. The wife, it turns out, was intending to return that purse to Zappos using that very box. Which she then does, having no idea that inside the purse now were several thousand dollars of her jewelry!

When the couple arrive at their new home and start to unpack, bedlam breaks out as the wife figures out what has happened and why her jewelry is missing. The rep she reaches at Zappos decides to reroute the box directly to his desk, but once it arrives, the rep fears for the safety of the valuables if he were to ship them, and purchases a plane ticket to hand-deliver the package himself.

When he arrives, the incredibly grateful couple invite him in for dinner. Now they’re customers for life, as you can imagine.

 

Want more juicy content on customer service at your funeral home?

Check out some of these articles to dig deeper:

 

What ways has your funeral home been able to increase family satisfaction? Tell us in the comments below!

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