The Death Care Experience
Release Date:
It’s an often-misunderstood industry that exists between healthcare and hospitality and includes all the complexities of strict regulation and event management. And to add more complication, it includes an element of emotional support. Funeral homes and cemeteries walk a fine line of making the final arrangements of a loved one as frictionless as possible, all while knowing there are no second chances at delivering a positive experience. Host Sara Walker welcomes Walker expert Hannah Warren for a discussion on managing experiences within the death care industry.
Hannah Warren
Walker
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Highlights
The Little Things Matter
“…the need for attention to detail is heightened because the situation is emotionally, spiritually, legally sensitive, and, frankly, time sensitive. There’s a lot that has to happen in a very short amount of time, and the things that go wrong aren’t like in sitcoms. It’s not dropping caskets and swapping bodies. The things that go wrong are little things: a misspelled name in the program, the wrong color flowers, guests don’t know where to park, and they’re late to the service. In many other contexts, these things might seem trivial, but in this situation they can have a very negative and lasting impact on the family or the loved ones that you’re working with.”
Digital Is Still Relevant
“There are a lot of great use cases for digital and social platforms in this industry, because it’s been around for a for hundreds of years. People don’t always think of it, but these days you can share obituaries. People want to be able to leave their own memories or post photos or make announcements on Facebook or Instagram or wherever… Just like in a normal e-commerce experience, there could be ways that you could do that online and not have to interact with a location necessarily. And funeral homes are subject to online reviews, just like stores and restaurants. People are looking at Google, Yelp, these other places to try and determine where the best place is to have services for their loved ones. And even just having a website that makes it easy to find event details, grief resources, pricing… even digital is very relevant in the funeral industry.”
Transcript
Sara:00:00:01
It’s an industry that helps people through what is undoubtedly a difficult time, an industry where the company is responsible for the management of our final arrangements and caring for our loved ones.
Hannah:00:00:10
Funeral homes and cemeteries are often staples in their community. It’s a universal experience, something everybody will encounter at some point. When thinking about a customer in death care, people often assume that the individual who has passed away is our customer, but it’s actually the surviving family and loved ones whose experience we need to manage.
Sara:00:00:29
Let’s take a look at managing the experience in the death care industry on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.
Announcer:00:00:43
The CX Leader Podcast is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.
Sara:00:00:54
Hi everyone. I’m Sara Walker, host of this episode of The CX Leader Podcast and as always, thank you for listening. It’s never been a better time to be a CX leader, and we explore topics and themes that help leaders like you develop great programs and deliver amazing experiences for all your customers. It’s an often misunderstood industry that exists somewhere between healthcare and hospitality, and includes all the complexities of strict regulation and event management. And to add to more complexity, it includes an element of emotional support. Funeral homes and cemeteries walk a fine line of making the final arrangements of a loved one as frictionless as possible, all while knowing there is no second chance at delivering a positive experience. Our guest today spent many years in the death care industry. Hannah Warren is a senior engagement manager here at Walker, and we’re going to talk about some of the unique challenges facing companies like funeral homes and cemeteries on today’s episode. Hannah, welcome to The CX Leader Podcast.
Hannah:00:01:53
Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Sara:00:01:54
All right, Hannah. Well, we’re so excited to have you on the podcast today. I think this is an important topic and one that maybe many of our listeners have not really spent a lot of time thinking about. Can you maybe to start us off, give us an understanding of what your background in the death care industry looks like, um, and just what experience you’ve had in this industry and in designing a listening program just around, around the death care experience.
Hannah:00:02:23
Absolutely. So before coming to Walker, I spent six years in the deathcare industry, which would be funeral homes and cemeteries, uh, services on the day of, uh, anything that happens after an individual has passed. I helped manage our survey program, which we sent out a lot of surveys across the United States and Canada, which involved enabling our employees, training our employees, uh, analysis of results, and also just managing the day to day, making sure that these surveys get to their destination so that we can solicit that feedback.
Sara:00:02:59
Maybe to start things out. Can you share just with our audience what the relationship between a funeral home or a cemetery in its community looks like? I think that might be an interesting place to start when talking about an industry and managing an experience in something as as complex as death care. So what does that relationship look like between the community that these organizations exist in?
Hannah:00:03:22
So funeral homes and cemeteries are often staples in their community. It’s a universal experience, something everybody will encounter at some point. And some of these businesses have been established, sometimes for hundreds of years. They’ve served multiple generations. Obviously, these organizations provide funeral services, and people will often go and visit the graves of their loved ones, but they also are part of the community in other ways. People will go jogging through the cemeteries. Sometimes there will be historical tours if there’s anything noteworthy in these locations. They’ll have community events like Dia de Los Muertos or remembrance events on major holidays. And even when Pokemon Go was released, a lot of monuments and statues were stops or destinations in the game. So that was a whole new type of audience that was entering these locations.
Sara:00:04:13
Yeah, that’s a really interesting spin and kind of preparing for our conversation today, I was reminded of a of a trend that I kind of fell into on, on TikTok, which was, um, this creator who, uh, actually goes around and restores very old headstones. And when she, while she’s restoring the headphones and, you know, it’s a little bit of ASMR as far as like the cleaning off of the mildew and hundreds of years of, of damage. But she’s telling the story what she can find out about the individual that’s buried there, which is a definitely a unique spin. I think you think of you think of funeral homes or cemeteries, and you ultimately probably think about your own mortality or the mortality of loved ones. But there is also like a historical and I think the way you phrased it is a point of the community, an interesting aspect or angle that maybe people don’t naturally associate those types of companies or organizations with. So just a little aside, as far as an interesting spin on, you know, what, what a cemetery or a funeral home could mean, it could also mean a historical context. But thinking about the main customer segments, certainly there’s an element of the community at large, right, that these organizations or businesses are established in, who are the main kind of client or customer segments when it comes to death care?
Hannah:00:05:34
When thinking about a customer in death care, people often assume that the individual who has passed away is our customer, but it’s actually the surviving family and loved ones whose experience we need to manage. There are two main groups, or two main ways that you look at customers in death care. There’s pre-need and at-need. Pre-need is when people are making arrangements ahead of time. Maybe they’re buying cemetery property or prepaying funeral services or catering, things like that. And that aspect is a lot more like a traditional sales experience. You’re identifying needs, you’re building a relationship, and you’re conveying value in what you’re offering. At-need is a totally different ball game, though.
Sara:00:06:21
Sure. Is the way in which you go about designing. When we think of, of CX, if we were designing any sort of solicited feedback, right is that a different approach? I would expect potentially between the pre-need clients who maybe are not quite as, um, emotionally drained at the point of interacting with the organization versus at-need, where, you know, potentially the the death of the loved one maybe came as a surprise or a shock. Regardless, there’s that obviously a strong emotional component. And so it seems like it would be maybe a difficult place to to ask or solicit feedback during that time. What’s the difference between just the the solicited feedback approach, between the different journeys for at-need versus pre-need, or is there one?
Hannah:00:07:09
Yeah, there definitely is. Pre-need, like you said, there’s not as much emotional sensitivity. You can survey them pretty much whenever. But with an at need situation, when you’re thinking about gathering feedback, the typical advice would be to request feedback as close to the experience as possible for accuracy and relevance. But of course, it would be incredibly distasteful to solicit that feedback immediately after somebody has said goodbye to a loved one. In this situation, you would typically delay requesting feedback. We would typically wait at least a week, sometimes two, um, just to give a little bit of space, but as close to the experience as possible to get in the moment and actionable feedback. And another aspect is managing expectations, making sure that you tell the family that it’s coming, uh, that you’re going to be asking for this feedback often multiple times. That family has 100 things going on. So if you mention it once in passing, like a waiter mentioning the soup of the day, they’ll never remember. Uh, and also conveying its importance to you. Why should they care about giving you feedback without guiding them on how to respond to it? You can say things like, I want to continually improve my services. I want to serve other families better. Your feedback will enable me to do that in the future. So those are kind of the main components of soliciting feedback in this industry.
Sara:00:08:36
Yeah. Yeah, I think that makes obviously a lot of sense. Just trying to put, you know, myself in that situation. What would I want or appreciate from a company in which I’m interacting with and certainly that extra layer of, of sensitivity. And, um, I think you’re bringing up the point that communication is really of the utmost importance, which, while maybe particularly important for something like the death care industry and especially managing the the at need experience within the death care industry, a good and robust communication strategy that is very pinpointed to the customers and very explicit in what you’re hoping to do with the information that you’re asking them to provide is certainly a theme that any of our listeners could, could draw out and, you know, take to their own programs as well.
Sara:00:09:35
I think the other unique component about managing the experience in the death care industry is really that you have, you know, one opportunity to to get it right. And the stakes are so high because you’re dealing with the, the emotional component of this situation and what your customer base is going through in regards to losing a loved one. What needs to be in place from a company’s perspective to ensure you can get as close to, or always right with every, you know, part of the experience that you’re managing? How do you prepare for the fewest amount of mistakes possible when we’re in a situation where the stakes are so high?
Hannah:00:10:19
Attention to detail is critical.
Sara:00:10:21
Sure.
Hannah:00:10:22
Uh, the need for attention to detail is heightened because the situation is emotionally, spiritually, legally sensitive, and, frankly, time sensitive. There’s a lot that has to happen in a very short amount of time, and the things that go wrong aren’t like in sitcoms. It’s not dropping caskets and swapping bodies. The things that go wrong are little things: a misspelled name in the program, the wrong color flowers, guests don’t know where to park, and they’re late to the service. In many other contexts, these things might seem trivial, but in this situation they can have a very negative and lasting impact on the family or the loved ones that you’re working with. So it’s it’s essential to have a comprehensive process and enable your employees to carry out this process and continually be evolving that process and developing that process. When you encounter new situations, you want to make sure that you’re crossing your T’s, dotting your I’s, all of that good information and funeral directors are supposed to be the experts. Families often don’t know how this process is supposed to go or what all is involved. So they have to be forward thinking and prepare the family that you’re working with for what the needs are going to be from them or, you know, paperwork, what what to expect on the day of the service, things like that.
Sara:00:11:44
So when you were just running through all of those things that are happening during the day of a funeral service, or that a funeral director is managing, you know, I was really struck by maybe a consideration or perhaps it’s a bit of a hypothesis, but is there an element to what the the company can learn about the experience simply by observing or living through it with their customer, versus having to ask the customer directly about how that experience went? It seems like some sort of an observational, perhaps you could kind of terme it as ethnographic research might be at play here when we’re managing such a sensitive experience. I guess my question is around is that observation or additional data collection strategy something that is is prevalent in this industry?
Hannah:00:12:34
That is a good question. I’m seeing it more and more, but you obviously have a relationship with the family that you’re helping that established business relationship. But maybe guests that attend the service, you don’t have a relationship, you don’t have a way to reach out to them, and you may or may not want to ask for feedback in the moment. So you have to be really observant on those days. It is important to be monitoring, and you can also learn from your peer locations. Uh, just because you haven’t encountered a situation doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from it. You can, if you’re partnered with any other locations, you can learn about the challenges that they’re facing. You could collaborate to find solutions, or just take it as a learning lesson and be able to take that into your own actions.
Sara:00:13:23
Absolutely. Maybe one element that listeners wouldn’t think about when they’re thinking about the, you know, customer experience and the the death care industry. But something that I imagine is at play is what the digital experience looks like, right? When anybody who’s listening, their CX programs have to have an element of of digital. Uh, in today’s world and just how everybody operates, is digital applicable in death care? And if yes, what does that look like? And how does that play into some of the broader themes we’ve been discussing today around, you know, sensitivity, ease, emotional exhaustion, some of the complexities that are at play at this particular journey.
Hannah:00:14:04
There are a lot of great use cases for digital and social platforms in this industry, because it’s been around for a for hundreds of years. People don’t always think of it, but these days, uh, you can share obituaries. People want to be able to leave their own memories or post photos or make announcements on Facebook or Instagram or wherever. Um, you could also potentially do self-serve prearrangements. Uh, just like in a normal e-commerce experience, there could be ways that you could do that online and not have to interact with a location necessarily. Uh, and funeral homes are subject to online reviews, just like stores and restaurants. People are looking at Google, Yelp, these other places to try and determine where the best place is to have services for their loved ones. And even just having a website that makes it easy to find, uh, event details, grief resources, pricing, even digital is very relevant in the funeral industry.
Sara:00:15:07
Yeah. Wow. I mean, you just gave us so many great examples there that I, you know, did not have top of mind even in preparing for our conversation today. So I think that that just speaks to how digital our entire world is. And even something like a death care experience is it’s going to be exceptionally relevant, um, and a good place to gather data and inputs. And again, and like we’ve been talking about a lot today, a manner that is maybe not as intrusive as sometimes solicited feedback can feel in just such a sensitive time as this. So that makes a lot of of sense. And, you know, yeah, something that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought about. All right. Hannah, well, we’re getting to the point in the show where we try to take the conversation that we’ve had today, and if you had to distill it into one tip or trick for CX leaders, you know, what is something in the death care industry specifically that is important but maybe still applicable to our broader audience as far as something they could take away and, and look to apply to their own programs for additional benefit. What would you suggest?
Hannah:00:16:21
I would say, don’t judge your customers needs by what is important to you or your business. Nothing is too small or trivial. If it’s a priority to your customer, it’s deserving of your attention.
Sara:00:16:33
A great tip that I’m sure anybody could apply to any industry, and maybe it’s just a little bit more prevalent in death care, just how important that is. Thank you so much, Hannah. We so appreciate you coming on to the podcast today to lead us through some discussion around the death care industry, what CX looks like in that industry, and how some of the learnings that that, you know, unique experience takes can be applied to broader CX practitioners? Really appreciate the time. Hannah Warren is a senior engagement manager here at Walker. Hannah, thank you again for being on The CX Leader Podcast.
Hannah:00:17:09
Thank you.
Sara:00:17:10
If you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or how Walker can help your business’s customer experience, email us at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Remember to give The CX Leader Podcast a rating through your podcast service and leave us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value to you, our listener. Check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all our previous episodes organized by podcast series and a link to our blog, which we update regularly. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We’re an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening and remember, it’s a great time to be a CX leader. We’ll see you next time.
Tags: Sara Walker Hannah Warren death care funeral home cemetery