4 Ways Answering Services Help Funeral Homes Better Serve Families

Your funeral home’s first and foremost goal is to service the families that come to you in need.

Whether that means helping them pre-arrange a funeral for themselves or make final arrangements for a loved one, it’s a difficult task that requires compassionate listening and a caring response. When you have a lot of distractions like a constantly ringing telephone, it can be difficult to really live up to your commitment to excellence.

Fortunately, a few simple changes, like hiring an answering service to handle your calls, can make a huge difference to the flow of your day.

Instead of catching the phone yourself, let your answering service help with tasks like:

  • Compassionate call answering 24/7. Professional telephone operators and virtual receptionists are trained to listen, and with an answering service, you can have access to these caring people all the time.Your callers will be happy to hear a human voice, even if it’s not yours, instead of a cold answering machine when they call. An answering service can also help you prioritize after hours calls by creating a comprehensive call log.
  • Appointment setting. Funerals aren’t typically a walk-in style business, but your busy funeral home may make it difficult to dedicate much time to scheduling appointments. Instead of juggling your schedule to make sure both in-person clients and callers get the right amount of attention, let your answering service schedule your appointments.Using software that will integrate with the calendar system you’re already using, you can ensure that you’ll never miss an appointment or accidentally double-book a spot. Appointment setting can make a huge difference to your stress and work level, allowing you to focus on your clients’ individual needs.
  • Disaster recovery. There’s really no fear quite as terrible as what to do when there’s a major disaster and your loved one’s funeral is caught in the middle of disaster recovery. For some, this is the absolute definition of terror. Do you have a disaster plan already in place? If not, an answering service can help with keeping your callers calm and educated about the status of your funeral home. When you can’t be contacted, your answering service will act as the lifeline your callers deserve.
  • Emergency call routing. Maybe there aren’t a lot of emergencies inherent to your trade, but it’s always nice to know that you can be reached should one arise. Your answering service can gauge the need of a caller, so that you can take action if there’s a situation in progress.Whether Mrs. Smith has a sudden change of heart for her husband’s early morning funeral or one of your professional connections needs to speak to you right away, these urgent callers can be separated from the rest who are calling with questions that can wait and re-routed to you or an on-call person.

Answering services are an excellent tool to help your funeral home better service grieving families. By providing the human touch for every call answered and message taken, you’re also telling your clients that you care about them and will be there in their most difficult times.

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