There are many articles I read about the funeral business that talk about service. “You gotta give ‘em great service”; “Our staff gives the best service” “it’s all about service” Yet as Alan Creedy said in comments on his blog, when he asks a funeral director to describe what it is about their service that sets them apart from the other guy, usually the funeral director is at a loss for words.
So what is service?? I think of it like this:
Service…. is something….. that you do…… for someone else.
Great Service…. is when you do that something….with a smile on your face and warmth in your heart.
It’s really that simple. It doesn’t matter if you’re picking up garbage, delivering flowers or embalming a body. The same principles apply. Great Service comes from the heart.
The challenge with funeral service today is that so much of what we traditionally did for people was tied to the Body and the Box. Embalming, dressing, cosmetics, casketing, explaining, providing and selling the casket and vault, moving and placing the casket and body, transportation of the casket, equipment to hold the casket, a building designed to easily accommodate the casket and body and more. Now with the increase of cremation, decrease in visitations and viewing, decrease in processions and an increase in DIY memorial services… the services that we have been trained to provide are no longer desired.
So what service is it that we are supposed to provide for people? What is it that people truly value about what we do?
I just read a couple books that Alan Creedy suggested. “Marketing Metaphoria” and “How Customers Think” both by Gerald Zaltman. They were very thought provoking and I highly recommend both of them. Some of the things I learned from them were that most decisions/choices are made on an emotional level, not logical or analytical. And that it’s a deep unconscious thought/feeling that holds those emotions. The Zaltman’s have developed an interview system that can discover the deep metaphors that harbor those emotions that can give us insight into what people value and why they buy what they buy. I completely agree with Alan that it would be great to have the Zaltmans do some work for the funeral industry to help all of us understand what people really think/feel/value about funerals. The customer surveys and market studies that I have done really haven’t told me much in this area. The future success of my business lies in understanding what today’s customer’s emotional needs are and then making sure that my services and products meet those needs.
In my next post I’ll talk about what I think some of the values of the funeral are.
FYI – I bought the Kindle edition of Marketing Metaphoria online from Amazon. Then I downloaded the free “Kindle for PC” software on my Laptop, Work and Home computers. I don’t own a Kindle (yet) but my wife does and it’s a great little piece of hardware. With the Kindle for PC I was able to read the book where ever I was. You can adjust the look and font size which is great because the computer screen is sometimes in-between my regular and cheater lenses of my bifocal glasses. It also keeps your place, so where ever you open the book up next it knows where you left off.
I’m Dale Clock. Thanks for listening.
Dale-Time 
Dale, thank your for the acknowledgement. Great Post!
I have asked this question and probed for answers for almost 30 years and the only thing I can say with certainty is that service is not so much what you do but the attitude you carry within you.
While it may seem controversial, I wonder if we aren’t beginning to overserve our customers with all the “activities and things” we try to do when the anticipatory attitude of a deeply concerned friend might be just as effective.
my two cents