As is with our funeral business management consulting services Management Division, Accounting Division and JCGPerformanceTracker™ program, we think the below top ten strategies should be considered and reviewed within your own firm. All of them follow under our principles of being sure you exercise continual improvement in the areas of Workplace, Marketplace, Customer Service, and Financial Performance.
- Measuring client family satisfaction: Make sure you prepare a survey that asks the right questions; survey every family served; and quantify all responses into a database that can provide you with performance reports by company, location and individual arranger.
- Training staff: Make sure you are providing staff training on customer service, arrangements, telephone etiquette, and how to handle shoppers. Make sure you have established clear expectations, procedures, objectives, behaviors and practices for employees to follow for every facet of service you provide i.e. first calls, greeting families for visitation, making funeral arrangements, etc. These Service Standards or Best Practices need to be regularly reviewed, enhanced and carefully communicated to all staff.
- Tracking arranger sales performance: Make sure the sales performance of each arranger is closely monitored with a detailed sales report that shows call volume, business mix and sales average of all sources of revenue.
- Tracking arranger collections performance: Make sure you closely monitor each arranger’s ability to secure payment professionally, and on time.
- Conducting regular staff meetings: Make sure you have regular communication with all staff with the primary focus being customer service delivery. Make clear that customer service is “Job One” and provide feedback on current performance using Customer Satisfaction Survey Reports. Additionally make sure you are meeting at least weekly with your key management group.
- Monitoring Employee Morale: Make sure you annually survey your employees on their level of job satisfaction and practice regular employee communication and recognition.
- Regularly reviewing your pricing: Make sure your price lists and pricing are consumer friendly; Your merchandising plan and pricing is effective; and your packages are useful and attractive to consumers.
- Tracking Market Share: Closely follow market share monthly. Analyze historical market share as well to identify trends.
- Making an annual operating budget: Make sure you are accurately projecting calls, mix and averages as well as knowing your precise operating expenses.
- Using funeral industry specific accounting program: Make sure you are receiving timely, accurate financial statements and management reports that enable you to successfully run your business.