How to outsource your funeral calls: a step-by-step guide. Part two
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Story of a Funeral business and Frontline - Part Two
“Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.”
Stage two - start planning
The most powerful and essential stage of any onboarding is managing the expectations of what is and isn't possible. Live call listening is a great leveler. And, in most cases, It proves our team, knowledge, and experience to be far beyond the preconceived thoughts of the participant.
From here we sit down with a big piece of paper and sketched out the first call process, the procedure for chapel visits, how to respond to arrangement requests… We also worked on the data; collecting all the local and regional information salient to each branch – from any local oddities like parking challenges, bus routes or their location in relation to other landmarks/shops. The team also works to gather information on local hospitals/nursing homes and residential homes.
Most importantly, and for the very first time, we spent some time with the team at EMCOM. If you’re aware of Funeral software then you’ll no doubt have heard of EMCOM. Simply put their solution is outstanding. We were bowled over by the functionality and ease of use of their system.
After sharing some insight into how we operate and listening to what the business needs they worked on building a solution that means we can access specific details about funerals in order to relay this to the caller and provide a resolution to any questions they might have.
This will provide our team with an instant view of each branches ‘chapel data’ live on the system, instantly. No waiting, no delay. More exciting developments lie ahead on the roadmap, a little further down the line. We’ll definitely be sharing some of the benefits as we progress along this journey. Very exciting. Watch this space
Once all the data was collected we set about creating a workflow diagram of the service we’d deliver. We’ve found that the best way to communicate the process and each calls outcome is to get it down in a workflow diagram. It is then very easy to make visualise and to communicate the ’flow’ of the calls.
“My biggest takeaway was, the fact that not only did ‘I’ feel confident with Frontline handling our calls, but that my colleagues also felt this way. Our clients are of the utmost importance to our day and night. Having developed a bespoke workflow for each area of our business, we are in a position to put our faith in Frontline to enhance our services when our funeral homes are closed.”
Next stage in building the funeral home call answering service (and while the ‘techie types’ are getting excited about SQL code) we moved onto the people piece. Next week...
