Evaluating and implementing a funeral home customer relationship management (CRM) system requires careful upfront planning, time, resources and buy-in from your staff. But the rewards outweigh the risks if your staff fully adopts the system.
Learn more about the benefits of funeral home CRM systems, how to determine if it’s the right solution for your firm and more in this complete guide:
- What Is A Funeral Home CRM System?
- Customer Relationship Management System Versus Case Management System
- Benefits
- Is A Funeral Home CRM System Right for You?
- How to Select A Funeral Home CRM System
- How to Implement A Funeral Home CRM System
What Is A Funeral Home CRM System?
At its core, a customer relationship management (CRM) system helps businesses manage interactions with prospects and customers, providing a central location to store and access their information. CRM systems also help organizations better understand how those individuals interact with their marketing communication efforts and one-on-one, relationship-building communications throughout their lifetime. If implemented correctly, businesses can use their CRM system as the single source of truth when determining an individual’s lifetime customer value – the amount of revenue an individual consumer will generate throughout every stage of their life.
For funeral professionals, using a CRM system can improve your staff’s productivity and streamline communication, helping to enhance your level of service for client families from the first interaction. Before determining if a funeral home CRM system is right for your firm, it’s important to distinguish the difference between a customer relationship management (CRM) system and a case management system.
Customer Relationship Management System Versus Case Management System
Traditionally, funeral homes have used case management systems to help manage their at-need cases only. However, as prearrangement becomes more common, funeral homes will need to consider how they manage their preneed cases too. A customer relationship management (CRM) system helps funeral homes track every piece of information about an individual’s relationship with their firm from the first phone call, to the arrangement conference, to leading up to their service and providing aftercare resources for their family.
Benefits
Funeral home CRM systems offer many benefits, but the most effective CRM systems will integrate with all aspects of your funeral home operations, including your preneed carrier and case management software, aftercare program and lead generation efforts. According to CRM.ORG, CRM systems offer the following features and benefits:
- Better client relationships
- Ability to cross-sell
- Organize customer information
- Sales productivity
- Improve customer satisfaction
Read the full list of features and benefits here.
Is A Funeral Home CRM System Right for You?
How do you determine if a funeral home CRM system is right for your firm? Fortunately, you can evaluate your current funeral home operations for these seven signs:
- Do you need help growing your preneed program?
- Do you struggle to keep a steady stream of leads for your preneed counselors?
- Do you have trouble locating your customer data?
- Do you want more visibility into your sales team’s efforts?
- Do you want to improve your customer service?
- Do you have valuable, long-term customer relationships to manage?
- Do you want better reporting so you can track a lead from start to finish?
Read the full article here.
How to Select A Funeral Home CRM System
Introducing a new technology solution into your funeral home’s day-to-day operations is a major step. It requires careful upfront planning, time to implement and training of your staff. Once you determine if your funeral home needs a CRM system, discover how to select the right funeral home CRM system to ensure it will serve your firm’s needs for the long run.
How to Implement A Funeral Home CRM System
Implementing a funeral home CRM system takes time and resources. The biggest challenge you may face is getting buy-in from your staff because a CRM system is only effective if your team adopts and uses it to its full potential. According to CRM.ORG, a successful CRM implementation plan boils down to 10 steps:
- Map out your specific needs
- Shop around for the best CRM system
- Think about integrations (e.g., preneed carrier, case management software, etc.)
- Select a CRM implementation team
- Write down your metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals
- Plan a comprehensive budget
- Clean and prep your CRM data
- Onboard your CRM users
- Rollout the CRM system for an initial stage
- Analyze your data and get feedback
Read the full article here.
While implementing a CRM system may seem like a daunting task, you can enlist the help of a vendor who specializes in implementation. At Homesteaders, your Account Executive can work with you to determine if a funeral home CRM platform is right for you and develop an implementation plan for integrating a CRM system – like the EnGauge™ CRM system – with your funeral home’s day-to-day operations.
