Articles

Visibility also can look like a commitment to continually assessing and improving your business. When was the last time you stepped back and truly evaluated your business? Not your month-end reports. Not last year’s call volume. Not your website. Your actual business. When I ask funeral home owners this simple question, it often catches them off guard. Most owners spend their days immersed in immediate demands. They are busy arranging services, managing employees, responding to unexpected challenges, overseeing operations and making countless decisions that move the business forward. The challenge: While they’re busy running the business, the business itself continues to evolve, as do their competitors, their employees, their community, the families they serve and the expectations placed on their organization. The question isn’t whether change is happening but whether they’re paying attention to it. In July’s issue of The […]

For decades, funeral service was a relationship business built on word-of-mouth marketing, referrals from local religious venues, and having a familiar name on a building on Main & Main. And while that foundation still matters today, it is no longer where the decision-making process begins for most families choosing a funeral home. That process now more than ever begins online. The 2026 Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior Study (“FCCBS”), conducted by Foresight and Fortitude Research and Marketing, provides us with a wealth of insight into consumer preferences and how funeral professionals can improve the way reach and serve their families based on these ever-evolving preferences. The FCCBS data quantifies just how many people are starting their decision-making process online – 81%. Yes, 81% of future consumers plan to research funeral and cemetery options online, while only 60% of recent customers […]

Reframing Pet Loss Through Compassion & Care “Stoic” and “Never too high, never too low”  are words and phrases that those who know me closely have often and consistently used to describe me. I am the youngest of four with a 20-year age gap between myself and my three older siblings. My mother was number 15 out of 16 kids and my father was the middle child among five brothers. And having both sets of grandparents born in the 1880s, I have been around death practically all my life. But as a grown human being, I have to say that the most difficult decision(s) that I’ve had to make is deciding when to have any of my dogs put down (multiple times in the past). Then my pit bull corgi mix rescue of 10 years, Stitch, took a severe downturn […]

Why exceptional service requires exceptional planning. In funeral service, the phrase “white-glove service” is often associated with hospitality. It brings to mind polished facilities, professional dress, attention to detail, personalized experiences and compassionate interactions with families during some of the most difficult moments of their lives. Those things matter, and they always will. But funeral professionals sometimes mistakenly view white-glove service only through the lens of the family experience. In reality, exceptional service is rarely the result of personality alone. It is also the result of operational discipline behind the scenes. Families experience the end result of your business model long before they understand the business itself. They experience it through responsiveness, consistency, professionalism, communication, organization, confidence and trust. They experience it in how seamlessly the team works together, how prepared staff are to handle difficult situations, how clearly options […]

It’s as valuable to you and your successors as it is to your customers. There is a moment, somewhere between the first phone call and the final goodbye, when grieving family members decide whether they feel truly taken care of. You don’t get a survey response from them in that moment. You don’t get a second chance to change their answer, either. The funeral service profession has long prided itself on compassion and professionalism. And in many ways, that reputation holds. The 2026 Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior Study (FCCBS), which surveyed more than 5,000 consumers and 1,100 industry professionals, confirmed that our people are perceived as professional, comforting and responsive. Those are real strengths. But this same study, now conducted for seven consecutive years, also revealed a more complicated picture beneath the surface. Consumers want more. And the operators […]