How to outsource your funeral calls: a step-by-step guide.
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Story of a Funeral business and Frontline - Part One
“The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
Step 1 – Where does it start?
It starts with an open mind and desire to provide an exceptional customer experience to each and every client, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The Customer - a funeral business with 110 funeral homes based in the Midlands
We first spoke with this customer about our services at the CFSMA in Dudley, 2006. Following this initial meeting, the senior management team visited Frontline’s offices and the conversation began... Over the following years, many meetings, conference calls, testing, and tweaking we managed to agree on a way forward.
The funeral industry is one steeped in history, a tradition as old as time: a family business run by a patriarch, the father, an upstanding member of the community a figurehead of the trade. The thought of handing over first contact with new clients, calls from families to a third party can be daunting.
There is a time though when life and customer expectations get in the way. Clients nowadays expect always-on, no delay and connection. If their call goes to voicemail they move on.
“We sound much more professional than before. It’s also saved our staff time and energy, simply because they’re not disturbed at night so often.”
On a personal level, with all these expectations, is it so very easy for ‘it’ - the customer, the business, the reputation – to stand in the way of life. The connected customer demands more from you. They expect to get details of funerals at 02:00 on a Sunday morning. The internet and companies like Amazon have raised customer expectations. You must decide to lead from the front or keep things the way they are.
This client decided in April to ‘get on board’ with Frontline.
The first stage was to define the process – what does Frontline currently do for other funeral businesses?
The senior management team joined our operators for an evening shift. Sitting side-by-side with our telephone operators they experienced first-hand what it is like to field the calls at Frontline. They also took the opportunity to understand the challenges of the operator. It was a very productive session.
It was such a great success. The team was really impressed with the quality of the staff, the resources, and the experiences that the team.
