Ask the Expert

Written by Welton Hong Trust has always been the foundation of funeral service. Families make one of the most emotional purchasing decisions of their lives based largely on reputation, recommendations and increasingly, online reviews. That makes fake reviews more than just an annoyance. They have become a business risk. A new survey from reputation management company LocalImpact found that fake online reviews have become nearly universal for local businesses, with 72% of business owners reporting they received at least one fake review during the past year. Even more concerning, nearly four out of five believe they have been the target of a coordinated attack at some point. For funeral homes, cremation providers and cemeteries, where a family’s confidence can be won or lost before a phone call is ever made, those findings deserve close attention. Reputation Is Revenue Unlike many […]

Written by the lawyers of WRW Legal, PLLC:  Wendy Russell Wiener, Lauren Pettine and Hank Thompson. Unclaimed cremated remains: a problem for so many funeral homes and crematories.  I would be surprised if even a handful of my clients did not have a storage closet containing unclaimed cremated remains.  Those unclaimed cremated remains are often the result of inaction by a former owner of the funeral home or crematory.  Buyers, however, have caught on to the sticky problem of unclaimed cremated remains and will often stall a transaction while the cremated remains are handled.  We’ve even seen a transaction fall apart because of the inability of the Seller to address the dozens of unclaimed cremated remains on hand. The problem of unclaimed cremated remains is not unavoidable.  In fact, there is a law or rule in nearly every state which […]

Written By Welton Hong, Founder and CEO, Ring Ring Marketing I was standing in the hallway at a funeral service conference recently when a funeral home owner approached me with a question I’ve heard countless times over the years. “What’s a good conversion rate for Google Ads?” Before I could answer, he followed up with a frustration many funeral professionals have voiced to me. “The leads we’re getting from Google aren’t very good. Most of the people who call just want to know the price,” he said. I nodded. I’ve had variations of this conversation dozens of times with funeral home owners and cemetery operators across the country. The concern is understandable. Marketing isn’t cheap, and if you’re investing money in Google Ads, you want to know whether it’s producing results. But as we talked, it became clear that the […]

Written by the lawyers of WRW Legal, PLLC:  Wendy Russell Wiener, Lauren Pettine and Hank Thompson. Our clients’ favorite advice to receive from us is:  do nothing.  It is advice we give with some regularity when circumstances call for it.  But, more often our advice is to take action.  I can think of no better action to highlight here than the action related to decedent identification.   Throughout the summer each year I travel from convention to convention, trade show to tradeshow usually speaking on how funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories can avoid liability – both regulatorily and civilly. My advice is always the same.  The single most effective way to avoid all kinds of liability is the easiest and it’s FREE!  It’s simply to slow down.  I have coined the phrase “the Wendy 30” which is your reminder that everyone […]