Evaluating if your firm needs a customer relationship management (CRM) system begins with analyzing your current funeral home operations to identify areas of improvement and opportunity. In most scenarios where you feel your firm could grow or become more efficient, a funeral home CRM system can help. Discover seven questions to help you evaluate your current operations and identify if you should pursue a funeral home CRM for your firm.
1. Do you need help growing your preneed program?
A preneed program can help your at-need business in several ways – including increasing brand awareness in your community, fostering more educated consumers, increasing word-of-mouth referrals and emphasizing creative memorialization for families. However, if you’re struggling to grow your preneed program or don’t know where to begin, a funeral home CRM system can help.
Using a CRM system enables your firm to scale without sacrificing productivity because you now have a central location to store and access your prospect and customer information. Even the most effective CRM systems – like the EnGauge™ CRM from Homesteaders Solutions – will integrate with all aspects of your funeral home operations, from marketing and sales to customer service, and continue to evolve as your firm grows.
2. Do you struggle to keep a steady stream of leads?
If your firm struggles to keep up with new leads, you might need a CRM system. A funeral home CRM system can help you work more efficiently by quickly categorizing new leads, collecting the necessary contact information and assigning them to the appropriate staff member. Implementing a CRM system can reduce your team’s administrative duties, freeing up time to focus on providing the best service to families.
3. Do you have trouble locating your customer data?
How do your staff members keep track of customer data – is it in one central location? If not, then a CRM system can help you organize your existing customer data in one place – a single source of truth for your staff. Intelligent CRM systems will also help you create standardized processes for collecting new contact information, updating existing contacts and acting on your data, which can lead to improved sales and customer retention for your funeral home.
4. Do you want more visibility into your sales team’s efforts?
Knowing the status of your sales staff's efforts is essential to the overall success of your funeral home business. With a CRM system, you can keep your finger on the pulse by generating regular performance reports to monitor your team's productivity and identify areas of improvement or opportunity. A CRM system can also speed up your administrative tasks so your sales staff can spend more time helping client families.
5. Do you want to improve your customer service?
Ensuring your firm is top of mind – and not your competitor down the street – is more important than ever. Providing exceptional customer service and inspiring lifetime customer loyalty can help establish your firm as the go-to provider in your community, and implementing a funeral home CRM system can help you get there. Using a CRM system makes it easy to store and maintain customer data throughout their lifetime. Any team member can quickly review a prospect or customer’s information and know what marketing or one-on-one communications they’ve received from your firm, creating a seamless handoff between staff members and a positive experience for your customers.
6. Do you have valuable, long-term customer relationships to manage?
Yes! Every single family you work with is a long-term customer relationship. Tracking every interaction your firm has with a person – from your first phone call, to the arrangement conference, to leading up to their service and providing aftercare resources for their family members – can help you provide best-in-class service every step of the way. And when you provide exceptional service, you establish lifetime customer value and inspire customer loyalty and referrals to family and friends, helping ensure your funeral home’s success for years to come.
7. Do you want better reporting so you can track a lead from start to finish?
If you or your staff members are manually entering data to produce reports, you’re limiting your time to serve families and promote the importance of advance funeral planning. CRM systems give you a central location to store your data and often offer real-time reporting, so you can easily access reports about your firm's preneed and at-need services.
Next Steps
If one or more of these signs resonated with you, contact your Account Executive for assistance evaluating your funeral home operations and determining if a funeral home CRM system is right for your firm. The right system will help your firm increase operational efficiency so you can focus on providing the best service for families in your community.
