“Customer Experience”, or “CX” for short.  It’s an extremely important part of your business operation —  whether you know it or not.

 

Customer Experience is a subjective thought process of how your clients and others — such as shoppers and people who may simply look to your website for obituaries or to log on to a streamed service — “experience” how they have been treated.  Suffice it to say, poor customer experiences will eventually lead to loss of clientele and revenue.

 

Even before the term was invented I’ve always been big on the customer service.  I used to refer to it as “under-promising and over-delivering” or as a friend of mine always says “operating with low ego but high output”.  It was, in the “old days” that “high output and over-delivering” would win customers for life.

 

I’m of the opinion that positive or negative customer experiences (CX) happen much faster in today’s world.  And, I also believe that decisions on those experiences and how a customer or potential client family will view your business happen faster also.  That’s why you have to always be concerned with how you are recieved in whatever fashion it is — in person, branding, via website, building appearance, and more.

 

And, sometimes you need to take a good, hard look at how your situation is and what you are doing about it.  I don’t think CX is “set and forget”. . . it is more a “monitor and keep improving” mindset that needs to be kept.  Because, for many customers and potential clientele, heritage does not seem to mean as much to business loyalty as “what can you do for me today” does.

 

At Funeral Director Daily (FDD), I try to give a very positive “Customer Experience” to my readers.  I check my stories and website and keep trying to improve on them.  But, as hard as I try there always seems to be little glitches.  Last week on Wednesday and Thursday, for about an hour each day, FDD was inaccessible to its readers.  It was because our website, which has an auto-renewal function for annual payment, cancelled us for non-payment  — even when two days prior I was notified by the company, a major web-host, that my credit card would be charged and I’d be all set for another year.

 

So, my mornings start early.  I awake and do about 20 minutes of devotions and prayer and then I check Funeral Director Daily to see that my blog post has went out to all who have asked for it.  On Wednesday morning, I could not access the web-site so I eventually logged into my web-host.  There I found, for some reason, that they did not charge my card the day before and my site was not up for non-payment.  I immediately manually paid the charge for one year and was up within minutes.  Almost immediately I received an e-mail receipt that I was good to go for another year.

 

Much to my surprise. . . . the same thing happened Thursday morning — even though the company had sent me a receipt the day before.  I did the same thing and manually paid again. . . then I received an e-mail that thanked me and said I am now paid up for two years.

 

I held my breath on Friday morning, but it appears my web-host got my account figured out.

 

As you can expect, my “Customer Experience” with that company is now on its last-legs.  I need to get to the bottom of the issue, but the company may lose FDD as a customer because of this poor CX.. . . .and, in this case the poor customer experience became a negative reflection on Funeral Director Daily when readers could not access the site for some time.  I’m a pretty patient person and am going to get to the bottom of this issue, but as I said, the performance and customer experience of this web host is now hanging on life support with me.

 

 

And, the same type of situation could happen for your funeral home.  While there are things that you control and can watch out for. . what about what you don’t control?  Things such as does your building get snow removed promptly, does your answering service answer promptly, and many more items you can probably think about.

 

Is your telephone ettiquette correct with consumers?  Do you greet visitors at the door promptly?  Is your website easily navigable and does it provide the information your consumer is looking for?  Are you friendly and courteous to visitors when conducting services even when you have 50 things on your mind? . . . . Will people looking for a funeral stream be able to find it easily?  Those are questions that you need to monitor almost each and every day.

 

I think your customer experience channels are something that you need to be constantly monitoring because when one goes sideways the negative effect it could have on your business can be hurtful.

 

Related —  Here is an article that I found entitled “Customer Experience:  A comprehensive guide for 2024“.  It may be worth a read as it gives lots of information including how you can measure customer experience.

 

Related —  When you are in the throws of running and managing the day-to-day operations of a business, sometimes I think we don’t always take the time to see how potential customers are experiencing what we do.  I’ve told you that my wife and I spend three months a year in a rented condo in south Florida.  We’ve gotten to know many people who are in the same situation as us — younger (at least I perceive myself as being younger) retired folks from the Midwest or East Coast who enjoy getting out of the northern winters.

 

One of the commonalities we have, and I hear about it because I’m the “funeral director” in our group of friends, is that while we are gone from our northern homes we have friends who pass away up north.  The two biggest complaints that I hear about this situation from our winter friends is that “the funeral home my friend is at didn’t even provide a condolence page for us to offer sympathy” and/or  “the funeral home didn’t even offer a livestream of the funeral service”.

 

I think in today’s day and age a funeral home needs to do both or the “Customer Experience” is really lacking.  Condolence pages are pretty universal but livestreaming funerals does not yet seem to be.  If you are not happy with your funeral home’s livestream capability or you don’t yet offer this service on all services check with the people at OneRoom . . . . they will get you all set up and I don’t think anybody does it better.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Why we want to double up on your ancestors’ graves.  Islington Tribune (Great Britain)
• Call the professionals:  Funeral director says preplanning helps families at a time of loss.  Jamestown Sun (ND)
• Haut Funeral Home website – Jamestown, ND
• At cemetery’s first board meeting since 1995, Cass County sexton steps down, members wrestle with tough issues.  Fargo Forum (ND)
• Pennsylvania mans steals cremated ashes then punches owner, police say. CBS News Austin (TX)

 

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