Is the internet changing the funeral industry?

I want to hear your thoughts.

Posted by:

Ryan Thogmartin (Huppstiverson)
Connecting Directors, Co-Founder

In my opinion, absolutley, the internet is making the world a whole lot smaller. Therefore people are more educated now, they look for differences, not only price but experience.

Experience is what drives the funeral industry, If you have a good experience your going to come back, its the first law of business retention.   We are selling experiences, even though they come at a bad time in their life, the better we make their experience through our own experiences the better we can grow our businesses.

My funeral home was the first in town to put obituaries on their website and the first to have a condolence section. Well, I would say within a few weeks, if we were a day late getting the obit online or for some reason they couldnt post a condolence we heard about it.   Our competitor, through public persuation I am sure, had his website up and running within 3-4 months after us. It was pretty slip-shot and done in house but it was up.

We order our caskets online, we order our paper products (memorial Packages online) people are even looking online to order caskets, or make pre-arrangements.

The Internet has certainly made the world smaller and made our connection to our community much larger.

I always love to read the idea's the Funeral Futurist has for funeral homes, Pay Attention to his columns he is right on the money in my opinion.

That's what I think.

Chris,

I am glad to hear that your firm is embracing all of the benefits the internet has to offer the industry.

Have you thought about live webcasting funeral services? I know this is still a very new concept, but I have meet with some directors who are doing it and it has opened up some many new door for them to interact with their community and also broadcast events outside of their funeral home.

I am planning a blog post on this as we speak! Would love to hear your thoughts.

Posted by:

Ryan Thogmartin (Huppstiverson)
Connecting Directors, Co-Founder

I think webcasting is a great idea, however it should be offered as an option to the family not, just a constant streaming webcam. Some places do that. I think it could be offered as a income generator as well.

I agree it should be only offered as an addition to the service.

Many funeral home are even broadcasting local sporting events for the publicity and it seems to be a great way to start some community interactment with your firm during happy times, not just times of need.

Posted by:

Ryan Thogmartin (Huppstiverson)
Connecting Directors, Co-Founder