First, I’ll give you a great example of bad customer experience from a funeral home website vendor, and then I have a major announcement.
In last week’s newsletter, I pointed out that it’s the leader’s job to make sure that different teams are communicating. The customer service experience I’m about to describe involves two teams, so the actual breakdown was at the leadership level.
For the past couple of months, I have been helping a client create a new website with Funeral One. They were on a Front Runner website and were ready for a change.
We had some problems getting the obituary export from Front Runner, but eventually, they cooperated and sent us the files that Funeral One needed to load into the new website.
With the obits loaded into the new site, we had only one issue holding up the launch. Our domain name was held in an account owned by Front Runner, and it needed to be transferred into an account that we controlled.
We emailed their support team asking for the domain transfer….no response.
We waited a day and emailed again…no response.
We called…no one answered or returned the message.
We emailed and called again…no response.
My client and I were both extremely frustrated. Nevertheless, we continued to escalate the issue, trying to find someone at Front Runner who would resolve the domain problem.
Three days later, we received an email from someone at Tribute Tech, Front Runner’s parent company. The email said that the launch team at Tribute Tech handled domain issues, and we should have contacted them directly.
How were we supposed to know that???
The good news is that the domain issue was resolved within a few hours, and the new website was live.
The bad news is that we wasted at least three days and experienced a lot of stress, all because the handoff between Front Runner’s support team and Tribute Tech’s launch team was not handled properly.
Two teams not communicating properly…sounds like a leadership problem to me!
About a year ago, I wrote a newsletter discussing how one of the outcomes of website vendor consolidation was probably going to be customer service problems. Unfortunately, this is one of those times when I hate being right.
Hopefully, Tribute Tech will consolidate all customer service into one team that handles issues for all of their website vendors. But in the meantime, we’re dealing with multiple teams who need to communicate better, or they’ll continue to create bad customer experiences.
And now the for the major announcement.
Funeral Success is retiring.
Don’t worry; I’m not retiring, just the Funeral Success brand.
I’m splitting my business into Funeral Business Builder and Funeral Success Marketing.
Funeral Business Builder will be focused on helping funeral home owners create, package, and market funeral experiences that today’s families value. We’re harnessing the power of the experience economy to grow your funeral business.
Funeral Success Marketing will be my campaign-focused marketing agency. We will provide integrated marketing campaigns that can be customized and deployed quickly.
Funeral Business Builder focuses on strategy, and Funeral Success Marketing focuses on implementation.
In both cases, we plan to create packages that we will customize and license to funeral home owners on an exclusive basis. Funeral Business Builder will offer funeral experience packages, and Funeral Success Marketing will offer marketing campaign packages.
2021 was a record year for us, with revenues up 37.5% over 2020. So far in 2022, it looks like we’ll grow at least another 30+%. The reason for making this change is simple; I’m positioning my business for even more growth.
The limiting factor in our growth has always been me and the time I have to consult with individual clients. By splitting the business in half and focusing both sides on packages, we can help more clients.
Funeral Success Marketing’s first integrated marketing campaign will be announced at the end of May. Funeral Business Builder’s first experience package will be announced by the end of June.
I look forward to helping you win more calls and serve more families.
Until next time
John
For strategic help, visit FuneralBusinessBuilder.com
For marketing help, visit FuneralSuccessMarketing.com
