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How to Gather Positive Reviews For Your Funeral Home
Caden Rhoton • Jun 06, 2019
Over 2,500 people per month search the phrase, “funeral home near me.” If someone searches for a funeral home in your market, will yours be the one they call?
In this article, we’re going to show you how to beat your competition through funeral home review generation in three easy steps.
Step 1: Provide Effective Aftercare
To start off, if you’re not keeping in contact with your families after the funeral through aftercare, you’re likely not going to good reviews. Even if your funeral home does receive some good reviews, you likely aren’t going to get many.
Staying in touch with families through aftercare allows you to maintain the relationship your funeral home has with the family, build brand loyalty, and if done correctly, can provide the families with a way to ask questions and tie up any loose ends that may exist after the funeral service.
If your funeral home is not doing any sort of aftercare, we suggest you start. Some examples of ways that funeral homes keep in touch with their families after the funeral service include:
- Sending cards
- Making personal phone calls
- Sending personal text messages
- Hiring an in-house aftercare specialist
- Choosing an effective third-party aftercare program
No matter what you choose when it comes to aftercare, the important thing is that you choose to do aftercare. You will strengthen the relationships with your families and build brand loyalty by maintaining open communication.
In addition to building and strengthening the relationship, one of the benefits for funeral homes of running an aftercare program is the ability to maintain the conversation.
Step 2: Identify Brand Champions
Through conversations with your families after the funeral service, you’re able to identify your brand champions. In other words, those who had a great experience with your funeral home and would be willing to share that experience in the form of an online review.
We understand that not everything goes exactly according to plan all the time. But by maintaining the conversation with your families, you can also identify those who may not be as satisfied initially and turn them into brand champions through your aftercare efforts.
Step 3: Ask For the Review
The last part of funeral home review generation is simply, “Ask for the review.” Though seemingly simple, it can be the hardest step for funeral homes if not done correctly.
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Funeral directors often feel uncomfortable asking the question during the at-need arrangement conference or immediately following the funeral service. This awkwardness is yet another reason to implement an effective aftercare program.
For those that don’t provide effective aftercare, can you imagine the response when asking for a review? To the families, it seems abrupt and self-serving. But when it’s simply a part of the larger aftercare dialogue and conversation, the results are incredible.
Your funeral home has fans in your community. Your job as a funeral home owner or funeral director is to turn those fans into ambassadors by inviting them to leave reviews for your funeral home.
To ensure the best results with your review generation efforts, you should only ask for reviews from those who meet the following requirements:
- Those who expressed gratitude for your services.
- Those to whom you have provided with aftercare communication, whether it’s grief support, additional death certificates, miscellaneous questions/support.
That’s all there is to it!
- Communicate with and help your families,
- Identify your brand champions, and
- Ask for the review.
Domanicare has helped funeral homes across the country generate thousands of five-star reviews.
If you’re interested in learning how Domanicare can help your funeral home run an effective aftercare program as well as generate 5-star reviews for your business, schedule your free demo.
Funeral Home Articles
If there's one thing we've learned in 2020, it's that it's difficult to predict the future, and there will all be surprises that lie ahead. Businesses and individuals need to stay agile and adaptable to be ready for whatever life throws at them. 2020 has been a challenging year for the funeral profession and others as well. Still, we've seen that those funeral homes and funeral professionals who have focused on making their consumer experience as comforting and easy as possible are those that are winning. At Domani, we exist to help funeral homes help their families have a better experience. Through the power of text messaging, we follow up with families and give them the support and resources they need following a loss. That great experience then leads to a positive online review and helps others looking for a positive experience to find that funeral home. It's a virtuous cycle that helps grow a funeral home's at-need business. When it comes to preneed, the same principle holds. If funeral homes can provide the experience a family is looking for, that will be the funeral home that wins. During 2020, our preneed appointment setting team has found great success in scheduling remote appointments. Funeral homes that have been willing to adapt and find new ways to do business have grown even during difficult circumstances. We firmly believe that technology will help us as a funeral profession provide those better experiences for families, but simply using technology for technology's sake is not the answer. We need to leverage technology to help provide personal, engaging experiences with families. We shouldn't use technology as a crutch or an excuse. It's another way to help the ones we serve and provide them the support they need during a difficult time. As we approach the end of the year and look forward to 2020, take some time to think about how your funeral home is providing meaningful experiences for families and how/what you can do to improve that in the coming year. If you're interested in learning more about Domanicare or Domani Appoinment Setting, please schedule a demo by clicking the link below.
By far the most effective way to create a sense of loyalty to your funeral home is to perform an exceptional service for that family. However, there’s more that you can be doing to establish credibility with families. Here’s three easy steps on how to develop loyalty to your company and ensure your customers come back for your services when a loved one passes.
The vast majority of people in the US and Canada use smartphones. Almost everyone has a smartphone nowadays. Remember when the first “smartphone” came out in 1992 and cell phones like the BlackBerry and iPhone were considered luxuries when they were first created? Now it’s a common sight to see an iPhone. Most funeral homes and cemeteries haven’t even scratched the surface of text-based aftercare, but with 80% of the U.S. population owning a smartphone, and that number expected to rapidly grow.