I have noticed that funeral directors sometimes have a hard time seeing the difference between a product and a service. This is especially true when it comes to many of the “Other Services” (see previous post) that funeral homes are now providing. If you will, please indulge me in a little self promotion to make my point.
We are a Life Story Funeral Home. 5 years ago I joined a progressive group of Funeral Directors who had formed the Life Story Network. They had designed a system to gather the life story from a family and then produce a wonderful suite of products that include a written life story, memory folders containing pictures and the written story, Two video’s that tell the story (not just slide show) A website that allows people to read the story, see the video and share memories and photos with each other, Life Panel collage, custom, cards, register books and more. They can produce this material in 24 hours, send it back to us via the internet and then we burn the videos and print all the materials at our place. Plus Life Story Network trains your staff how to do all of this. It’s an amazing system. It has completely changed how I look at funeral service, how I do my job, and how I relate to the families. I will never go back to doing things the way I used to.
Here’s a link to the last 30 days of our calls. The bolded names are the families that chose to have us help them tell their Life Story. Click on a few and you’ll get an idea of what we do.
I also belong to a number of funeral Groups that include funeral industry leaders from around the country. I attend several meetings a year with these folks. I try to make it to the big conventions too. And at all of them I talk about Life Story. I have given presentations on it and I have talked one on one with folks and shown them what we do. The typical response is polite acknowledgement that it’s a nice product. They usually say they do something just like it or just as good. They also say things like “isn’t that a lot of extra work”, “isn’t it expensive” “I haven’t got time for that”. And the big operators figure they can do the same thing in-house themselves. (I thought the same thing and tried for a few years before joining the Life Story Network)
The challenge is that these folks think what I am telling them about is a product.
Products are typically commodities that people can buy at multiple places. The same caskets can be bought at most any funeral home or even Walmart. You just make a phone call and it’s delivered to your door. Take your photos to a Big Box store and get a slide show on a DVD. Do you want pretty folders with butterflies on them? I can get them by the thousands. Folders with simple templates that allow you to drop in photos are better, but any funeral home can buy them and so can the public.
Life Story is a SERVICE. Life Story is not a product or a suite of products. It’s not something we buy at wholesale and sell at retail. It’s a SERVICE that we provide to the families that call us. It’s something we do for our families that sets us apart from everyone else. So if the true value of a funeral is 1. the Gathering of People and 2. the Telling of Stories, what better service to provide than helping the family tell the Life Story of their loved one to everyone that attends the gatherings at our funeral home.
It’s in the arrangement conference where the true “Life Story is a SERVICE” first comes into play. Think about this. I spend at least 2 hours gathering the great stories from the family; SERVICE. (Gathering the life story is the most rewarding thing that I have ever done in funeral service. It really connects me with the families.) I spend another hour typing, organizing and uploading those notes; SERVICE. The professional life story writer spends 2-3 hours writing a unique Life Story; SERVICE. I spend 90 minutes going through photos with the family, scanning them, uploading them; SERVICE. The life story graphic folks spend 2 hours cropping, tweaking, doing layout to make the Life Panel, Memory Folders, books and cards; SERVICE. The Life Story video folks spend 2 hours editing, panning and zooming, adding music to create two different videos that tell a story (not just a slide show); SERVICE. I spend another hour printing, folding, collating, cutting, sticking and burning to make all the products. Then I spend another 30 minutes setting up all the products; SERVICE. All of that stays online forever; SERVICE. Add it all up and there’s at least 12 man hours of service there. That’s twice as many man hours as it takes to prepare, dress, cosmetize and casket a body. Which service is more important? How much would you charge for each service? Which service can you provide when the family chooses cremation with no viewing?
In the end that family walks away with a few Life Story products (things you can see, touch and hold). Those Life Story products enhance their experience with us. Those Life Story products always make the gathering better. Those Life Story products will last for generations to come. A Life Story Memory Folder and a Life Story Video with a professionally written life story is always a completely unique product every time because every Life Story is one of a kind. It’s the SERVICE that we provide to make the product that is valuable to the family, not the piece of paper that it’s printed on or the DVD it’s burned on. The SERVICE behind the Life Story products is what sets us apart.
I know that the Life Story system is not for all funeral homes out there. And many folks are doing a fine job with the products they use and offer. But are there things that you are providing for families that are really services and you are selling them like products? Just because what you do doesn’t involve a body doesn’t mean it isn’t a valuable service.
I’m Dale Clock. Thanks for listening.
Dale-Time 
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