“What led you to reach out to ASD today?”
It’s always interesting to hear how funeral professionals respond to this question when they contact ASD for the first time inquiring about our answering service. We learn a lot from listening and helping funeral homes identify why they need assistance with their communications. The varied answers we receive to this question have really helped us to recognize the most common pain points that plague funeral professionals.
“I’m tired of receiving non urgent calls in the middle of the night.”
“Our families need us to be available at all times and right now we are missing important calls.”
“My dad and his dad before him always the answered every call themselves, but I want to spend more time actively engaging with my community and I can’t do that if I am tethered to the phone.”
“Our employees are burned out from having to answer every call.”
We discover so much helping funeral homes tailor their communication preferences to address their specific needs and challenges. Whether it’s being more responsive to families, addressing staff burnout, or seeking new technical solutions to help save time, ASD has over 50 years of experience helping funeral homes to reach their communication goals. Our dedicated customer service team is committed to getting to know your funeral home and learning about your specific needs so we can create a communication strategy that fits your funeral home like a tailor-made suit.
Once your free trial is over, you will still receive regular check in calls to ensure ASD is meeting your expectations. This process is about more than just customer service for us. Following up with our funeral home clients on a regular basis helps us stay connected to their evolving needs, challenges, and the unique ways they serve families during difficult times. These conversations truly help us to be a better company.
Here are 8 insights we learned helping funeral homes build communication strategies.
1. Customization is Critical
No one, including ASD, knows more about how your funeral home’s calls should be handled than you. We like to joke that our answering service is built for control freaks (or as we like to call them, control experts) because our systems allow for a level of customization that no other answering service can offer. Working with funeral homes for more than five decades has taught us that our clients need to maintain maximum oversight of their sensitive communications. After all, that first call could very well be a family’s first impression of the funeral home. This is why our flexible systems, built specifically for funeral homes by our in-house tech team, are critical to our ability to serve funeral home’s with the highest level of service.
If we could not meet requests for custom scripting, call handling procedures and terminology from funeral homes, it would be impossible to provide the personalized service that funeral professionals require. Every funeral home operates differently, and their communication preferences reflect their unique approach to serving families. That’s why we’ve built our platform to adapt to the needs of each client rather than forcing funeral homes to fit into a one-size-fits-all model. By offering fully customizable options—such as tailored call screening, specific phrasing for messages, and detailed on-call dispatch instructions—we empower funeral directors to maintain complete control over their communication strategy while ensuring every caller receives the compassionate and professional response they expect.
2. Generational Difference in Staffing Matter
It’s not uncommon for a funeral home to begin using ASD when the next generation in line takes control of the business. In many cases, younger funeral professionals grow tired of working harder, not smarter and then have to convince another director, who is often a parent, the merits of using an answering service. We have lost count of the many times we have heard something along the lines of, “I have been wanting to use ASD for years, but my dad would not allow it.” Or “I need to convince my mom this is a good solution for us.” We have even had funeral homes start using our service, only to abruptly cancel because an older relative had not given their approval.
The funeral profession is one of the few vocations where employees’ ages range from 18 to 80. The family dynamic of funeral homes often requires older and younger generations to compromise to work together harmoniously. Helping funeral homes means offering a solution that is customized for everyone on staffe. When working with a firm that has multiple generations, ASD takes steps to identify which communication methods each staff members prefers. We want to be sure every person who may be listed as on-call for the funeral home feels comfortable using our different solutions and often provide group or one-on-one tutorials to funeral home employees to show the different ways our answering service can be utilized.
3. Families Expect 24/7 Availability
There is really no business quite like the funeral profession in terms of the need for immediate customer service at all hours of the day. Yes, you could argue that doctors have to be on-call for patients with urgent medical issues, but when you get down to it, if a doctor doesn’t respond the patient has the ability to call 9-1-1 or visit an urgent center. When families can’t get through to a funeral home after a death, the level of panic and anxiety they may experience is next level. They expect you will answer during their time of need, and not meeting that standard, even one time, could lose you the trust of a family you have worked with for generations.
This is why it is more imperative than ever that funeral homes invest in back up protection for their urgent, time sensitive communications to ensure that every call without exception is answered without delay. Many of the funeral homes we work with use ASD strictly as a backup to ensure if the line is not answered by a certain number of rings, someone will always answer the call. We also have experience speaking to panicked family members who contact a funeral home ASD answers for only after they had tried unsuccessfully to reach a different funeral home. This scenario has revealed to us just how much trust is lost between families and funeral homes when there is a lack of responsive customer service. ASD can help you create a communication strategy that ensures you never miss an opportunity to serve a family.
4. Directors Prefer Different Levels of Call Screening
We often receive calls from funeral professionals who are starting their own business and previously used ASD at a different firm they worked for. One of the most common questions we are asked is if calls must be handled in the same way. It is always a delight to inform these funeral directors that they can customize nearly every aspect of our answering service. There is a great deal of variation between the funeral home’s we serve, but our comprehensive training and flexible systems allow us to accommodate any request.
The most common difference we encounter between funeral homes is how they chose to have their calls screened. While some funeral homes want all calls patched through, others only want pricing and at-need calls escalated. There are also funeral homes that want sometimes want all message dispatched and other times prefer to check in for messages at their convenience, depending on their daily schedule. The ASD Mobile app is a great solution in this case as it allows funeral homes to make instant updates to how their calls are screened and dispatched by ASD while on-the-go. These settings are reviewed in detail with funeral homes when they come on service to ensure each funeral home’s communication strategy aligns with their on-call scheduling needs.
5. Staff burnout is a real concern
By and large, the most common reason funeral homes seek help from ASD is either they themselves or their employees are burned out from the 24/7 demands of the funeral home. The funeral director lifestyle is often rife with time-sensitive demands, but not everything requires immediate attention. ASD provides professional and compassionate call support, giving callers peace of mind their message will be relayed to the funeral home. By providing 24/7 answering support and innovative mobile technology, ASD allows directors to recharge and focus on their personal lives without sacrificing the quality of care they provide to families. We can help you build a communication strategy that will help ensure a better work/life balance for you and your team.
Building a team of experienced and dedicated employees requires funeral home owners to fully support their staff. One of the simplest ways to earn the loyalty of your employees is to give them the flexibility to conduct business on the go and the down time they need to recharge. Having the staff and the resources available to effectively share the burden of being on-call can make a huge difference in reducing burnout. Instead of requiring your staff to answer every call after hours, forward your lines to an answering service that can effectively screen calls and reach out to your staff when an urgent need is communicated. This will help you retain quality employees and will give your staff more time to rest and be with their families.
6. Finding time to learn a new technical solution is often a challenge
It’s kind of ironic that one of the biggest reasons some funeral homes reach out to ASD for help is the same reason that holds other funeral back from contacting us: lack of time. It’s a vicious cycle—you need help with communication so you can have more free time, but you don’t have enough free time to learn another new system. Sometimes, even finding a few moments to complete some basic paperwork or watch a tutorial video can be a challenge for busy funeral directors. However, what we have discovered is that funeral homes that take full advantage of our free trial by testing out all of our different features and seeing what works best for their firm consistently stay on service with ASD after seeing firsthand how we make life easier for funeral directors.
We recognize that there is a time commitment to trying out a new answering service and this is a large reason why we offer a longer trial period than most companies. We want to give you a long window not only to evaluate us to make sure we are a good fit, but also to take advantage of all of our timesaving solutions. For instance, taking just a moment to sync your website with our answering service via our FuneralSync™ program will save you time each and every time you upload a new obituary. ASD is here to streamline your tasks and help you work more efficiently, but we do require just a little bit of your time to make sure you get the best experience. We promise you won’t regret it.
7. Emergency vs. Non-Urgent calls can get blurred
Over the past 50 years helping funeral homes, we have been able to identify a list of the most common types of calls funeral homes receive, allowing our clients to specify which type of calls are urgent (requiring the on-call director to be immediately notified) and which are routine (allowing directors to review message at their convenience). When we say that every funeral home is different this is probably the biggest distinction. Without clear guidelines, there is an increased risk of not reaching a director for an important message or disturbing the director with something non-urgent. This is why we ask our clients to review their contacting criteria carefully and let us know if they ever need to change a setting.
Even with so many adjustable options, one might be surprised to learn how many gray areas there are. For instance, a funeral home might be on-call only for new death calls only, but what if ASD answers a call from a family who changes their mind and no longer wants their loved one cremated? This is an extremely time-sensitive message that technically would not be considered a new first call, but most funeral homes would want to be notified without delay. For these situations, ASD has supervisors scheduled 24/7 to advise our Call Specialists when they are unsure if they should reach out on a call or not. We are constantly analyzing these “grey area” calls to determine if new standards or best practices need to be implemented in our approach. This is part of ASD’s commitment to continually evolving to meet the demands of modern funeral homes.
8. A human touch matters more than ever
With so much recent chatter about AI and automation taking over the world, it’s nice to know that the funeral profession will always be a profession where personal interactions are highly valued. There is no substitute for authentic, human exchanges in this sensitive field. While technology can certainly assist with communication, such as when families are able to email or text obituary info and photos, it can never replace authentic moments of human connection.
ASD understands the importance of preserving that human touch while enhancing efficiency through technology. Our team of trained professionals ensures that every call is answered with empathy and expertise, providing grieving families with the personal support they need. While we integrate tools like text messaging, voicemail transcription, and custom call scripting to streamline communication, our focus remains on delivering caring, compassionate service. The greatest compliment we can receive is a funeral home telling us we made a good impression on a family they are serving. By balancing advanced technology with genuine human interaction, ASD helps funeral homes maintain the personal connections that define their profession.
Final Thoughts
Would you like to know more about how ASD can build your funeral home a customized communication strategy that meets your specific needs? We’ve been helping funeral homes for over 50 years but we learn something new from every new business we serve. Schedule your no-obligation consultation call today so we can get to know more about your funeral home and explain how our solutions can solve the unique challenges you face.
Related Reading
10 Perfect Examples of ASD’s Custom Funeral Home Solutions in Action
6 Ways to Gain Control of Your Funeral Home’s Communications
ASD: Freedom For Your Life, Protection For Your Calls
