1.The Service…Start with Self-Reflection

Before seeking external feedback, begin by assessing your current service delivery. This requires vulnerability—being open to recognizing shortcomings and embracing opportunities for growth. Evaluate your processes, interactions, and touchpoints. Where could improvements be made? Honest reflection sets the stage for meaningful progress.

2.Gather Client Feedback

Once you’ve acknowledged areas for improvement, the next step is to collect insights directly from your customers. Customer satisfaction surveys are an excellent tool for this purpose. These can be distributed digitally (email), via text, or through traditional mail (paper).

Focus on these key areas:

• First Point of Contact: Often the lowest-rated section in surveys. Ask how the family’s initial interaction with your business felt and identify gaps.
• Arrangement Process: Gather feedback on the ease and efficiency of the arrangement process.  How did the arranger listen and provide the options?
• Facilities and Appearance: Evaluate impressions of your facilities, vehicles, and surroundings.  Have you provided a comfortable and quality environment for the customer.
• Service Experience: For those who utilized your service, dig deeper into their experience.

Further questions should include perceptions of the overall value, how customers discovered you, their willingness to leave online reviews, and suggestions for additional services (lead generation).

3.Act on Feedback Quickly…Real Time Data

In the movie, “The Godfather”, bad news was expected to be delivered promptly! Similarly, receiving real-time data allows you to address issues immediately rather than letting them go unchecked.  Johnson Consulting’s Performance Tracker System allows you to leverage the latest technology, providing a rapid response to customer concerns.

4.Analyze the Data

Collecting feedback is only valuable if you analyze it effectively. Use robust reporting platforms to:

• Filter data by time frame, location, or region.
• Identify trends and actionable insights.
• Generate reports in real time for prompt decision-making.

5.Deploy Actionable Improvements

With insights in hand, it’s time to implement changes. Review the data with your management team and assign tasks for execution. Ask:

• What improvements can we make?
• Who will be responsible for these changes?
• What is the timeline for implementation?

Accountability and clear timelines ensure that your efforts translate into measurable results.

6.Invest in CX Performance Improvement

Customer experience (CX) isn’t a one-time fix; it requires ongoing commitment. Consider hosting Johnson Consulting’s CX performance improvement workshops to bolster your service culture. John DiJulius’s book “The Customer Service Revolution” is an excellent resource for understanding how to create a customer-first approach.

7.Generate Leads Through Exceptional Service

Satisfied customers naturally become ambassadors for your business. By prioritizing CX and deploying actionable improvements, you create raving fans who are eager to share their experiences. Encourage them to leave online reviews and share testimonials. This not only generates leads but also strengthens your reputation.

Conclusion

Customer service excellence is a continuous cycle. Start with honest self-assessment, gather and act on client feedback, analyze data, and implement changes. Invest in your team’s growth through CX workshops, and reap the rewards of lead generation from loyal, satisfied customers. Then, begin the process again to ensure ongoing improvement.

By following these steps, you’ll not only elevate your service standards but also foster a culture of excellence that drives lasting success.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Elevating Customer Service Through The Feedback and Growth Cycle appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

First, Let’s Get Your “House” in Order 

Business Assessment 

Ensuring success begins by strengthening the core of your operations. Think of the thorough operational checkup as checking the heartbeat of your funeral home in the areas of workplace, financial management, market place, and customer service. Recognize your strengths, find areas for growth, and locate where you can make things run smoother. It’s like giving your business a health check to make sure it’s in top shape for the journey ahead. 

Strategic Planning

Identifying areas of opportunity within your business can only be created by a strategic plan, this is where many businesses fail. We are staffed appropriately to manage the daily operations but not to execute on areas of opportunity identified in a business assessment. 

Customer Service “CX” Culture Training 

Strengthen your internal team by cultivating a culture that’s eager to embrace expansion. Enhance communication channels, ensuring everyone is passionately engaged in the exciting road ahead. A united and empowered team is the driving force to ensure that your funeral home can grow successfully in the dynamic landscape of acquisitions. 

Now, What You Need For A Successful Succession 

Expanding your business isn’t just about being brave—it’s about knowing what you’re doing and having a plan. From funding the dream to knowing how much your business is worth, there’s a lot to consider when moving through a successful succession.

Determining the Right Price

Valuation isn’t just numbers; it’s an art. Learn the art of valuing funeral homes, taking into account industry-specific factors. Master negotiation strategies to ensure a fair and mutually beneficial deal. 

Funding the Dream

It starts with funding. Know your cash flow, understand the assets involved, and make sure you can manage any funeral home loans. Explore different funding options while keeping your business stable. Evaluating various financing options without sacrificing your business’s stability is vital to success, underscoring the importance of amortization, interest rates and balloon payments, among others. 

Understanding the Structure

With any business value, the details of it are the structure. It has been said that you can make any value work if the structure is correct. For that reason, knowing among other things, what to allocate to cash, to a loan, to a non-compete agreement, and to consulting agreements, are critical. 

Successfully Onboarding a New Acquisition

The real magic happens post-deal. Craft a plan for a smooth transition, addressing challenges before they arise. Ensure the cultural integration of teams to create harmony within your funeral home. How do you do this? …. Due diligence and a strategic plan! 

Each step is a critical part in mastering the deal. Armed with knowledge and equipped with strategies, Johnson Consulting Group can help you step confidently into the future of acquisitions. 

SCHEDULE A CALL TODAY

The post Getting Your House in Order appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

Gathering feedback is crucial to improving your business and offering the best possible customer service. For funeral professionals, it’s essential to develop a strategy for collecting and monitoring feedback through surveys. When creating your own surveys, here are some concepts to keep in mind.

1. Multiple Choice Questions

Utilizing multiple choice surveys is a proven strategy to get pointed feedback from families. This type of question allows you to ask about specific components of your business or find out your NPS score.

Sample questions might include:

• On a scale from 1-5, how would you rate your overall satisfaction?
• Would you recommend us to your friends and family? (Yes or No)
• How did you hear about our business? (Be sure to list out all possible channels to understand how your marketing is working. Examples: Online, Friends or Family, Other)

Another benefit of multiple choice questions is the ease with which a client can complete them. Remember, people are busy, so the easier you make it for them to complete your survey, the more likely they are to do so.

2. Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions require a heavier lift on the part of the respondent, but they offer richer and more in-depth insights into how your business satisfies families. While multiple choice gives you pointed feedback about components of your business, open-ended questions provide a platform for families to note aspects of your business that you hadn’t considered.

For example, perhaps your multiple choice questions touch on your staff, pricing, and overall satisfaction with the service. However, upon introducing an open-ended question, families might point out that your location is hard to find (which you might never have considered asking about!).

Some open-ended questions might include:

• What about our service offerings did you like or dislike?
• How would you describe our staff?
• What could we have done to make the service more meaningful for your family?

3. Personalization

While you can find a number of generic survey templates online, you’ll want to create a customized survey that reflects a funeral home experience and its services.

You might also consider personalizing the survey to the specific respondent using their name and only inquiring about the specific services they received. This way, you’ll get more responses and more relevant feedback (Example: Low cost cremation versus full service providers).

4. Honesty

In most cases, clients want to feel heard. If a person had an exceptional experience with your business, then they’ll happily point to the people or components of a service that made this happen. If an experience underwhelmed them, then they’ll likely want to address it.

As such, you should not only encourage people to express their honest opinions, but you should respond to their opinions, especially the negative ones, with compassion and concern. If a family who had a negative experience feels like their issues were taken seriously, then they’re more likely to return or recommend your business.

Paper vs. Digital Surveys

In the past, funeral businesses relied on paper surveys administered through the mail. However, today’s digital surveys offer greater flexibility, lower costs, and a higher likelihood of responses.

What’s the Cost of Losing a Family

It’s inevitable that we all get a family where something goes wrong, whether it’s our fault or factors beyond our control. The reality is that the revenue contribution to your bottom line can easily create a business value loss of $20,000 or greater. Consider that when analyzing the cost associated with sending surveys. Most people would agree that when you look at it that way, sending surveys is not an option but a necessity.

With Performance Tracker X, funeral businesses can survey families via email and track the results through customizable dashboards. The key to a successful funeral business is happy families, and by collecting valuable feedback with Performance Tracker X, you can ensure that your services exceed their expectations.

SCHEDULE A CALL TODAY

The post 4 Key Components of an Impactful Follow-up Survey appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

In this blog, we share five simple ways to make sure your website functions as the front door to your business and keeps your digital doorbell ringing regularly.

1.  Keep it simple.

More than half of web users give a website about 15 seconds to capture their attention. That’s not much. Copy and content that is clear, concise, and to the point helps considerably. Your homepage should be inviting and informative without being heavy and overwhelming.

2. Update, update, update

Old content is a really easy way to lose a potential customer through your funeral home website. Set aside time regularly to review and update content as needed. Delete old content, add new or rotate customer reviews, and make sure images and videos look fresh.

3. Make sure it’s easy to contact your funeral home        

How to contact someone in your funeral business should be the easiest thing to find on your website and should exist in more than one place.

4. Your ‘About Us’ page goes a long way

Invest time on your ‘About Us’ page. The funeral profession is one that thrives on comfort and trust. Helping people feel like they know you and your values can definitely lead to a new customer.

5. Be mindful of when your website needs an upgrade

The web is a constantly evolving creature. There is always something new or a feature your website could benefit from that wasn’t available when you created the site. Things like search functionality, SEO, and being in ADA compliance, should always be on your website maintenance and upgrades list.

Trusted Johnson Consulting Group partner, Funeral Results Marketing (FRM), can help with all the above and more when it comes to your website. FRM is a digital marketing company dedicated solely to the funeral profession, specializing in marketing websites and tools for funeral homes, cremation businesses, cemeteries, and pet cremation businesses.  

The post How a Funeral Home Website Can Be The Introduction You Need appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

By taking an active approach to employee engagement, incentivizing optimal performance, and creating opportunities for advancement, you can ensure that your best team members stick around for the long haul. 

Analyze the Current Situation

For leadership, it’s often difficult to accurately gauge employee satisfaction. Even if team members are struggling with certain components of their work life, they might not feel comfortable raising concerns with their superiors.

Because of this, funeral directors and managers should develop a system for regularly collecting feedback from staff. Through this process, leadership will be able to get a clearer sense of how employees perceive their working conditions. Perhaps some team members feel overworked, while others crave additional challenges and responsibilities. 

The feedback you collect from employees during 1:1 meetings, employee satisfaction meetings, and employee reviews will help inform you on any changes you decide to make to your workflow, operational structure, and employee benefits. 

Invest in Your People

Studies consistently show that workplaces that offer employee training programs have higher retention rates. Because of this, funeral managers should sit down with each of their employees and help them chart out a career path within the workplace. 

By developing these career paths, leaders can gain a greater understanding of their team members’ various interests, skills, and desires, ultimately learning how each team member can continue to grow in the workplace. 

From there, leadership can devise various educational means to help these team members acquire new skills, whether this be on-the-job training or tuition reimbursement for outside courses or certifications. When your team members acquire new skills, they can bring these skills back to your business and drive additional revenue growth. 

Training and career development doesn’t just apply to your employees. Investing in leadership and management training can help your leadership team foster a supportive and productive environment for the rest of your employees.

Offer Incentives

Another way to improve employee engagement is through the use of incentive compensation plans. This strategy rewards employees with additional compensation when your funeral home achieves certain financial and customer satisfaction goals.

For example, many companies will reward employees with quarterly bonuses that are tied to the overall profitability of the enterprise. This creates greater stakes for each individual to ensure the success of the business. 

Still even more effective, however, are individualized employee incentive programs. Particularly for sales and client-facing roles, offering commission or bonus structures on an individual basis can help stir up some extra ambition and reward high performance. For example, if a person receives a bonus for meeting certain sales and customer service metrics, then they’ll be more likely to shoot for this number.

That said, you’ll want to be sure that incentive programs are fair, consistent, and easy to understand. When implemented hastily, employee incentive programs can be gamed, or they can lead to inter-employee competition that ultimately hurts your business. 

Bring Strategic Incentives and Engagement to Your Business

In order to create a successful incentive compensation program, you’ll need to consider the goals of your funeral home, as well as the culture of your team. While these programs can spur optimal performance, unattainable goals can just as easily discourage or frustrate your team.

To ensure that your incentive compensation plan — as well as other employee engagement measures — go off without a hitch, you should call in some outside expert help. 

At Johnson Consulting Group, we specialize in helping death care businesses of any size adapt to the changing landscape of employee engagements. By partnering with our team, our consultants can help you develop a holistic employee engagement program tailored to the specific needs of your organization. We also offer leadership and management training to help your best workers gain new skills and contribute further to your business. 

These days, workers are more selective than ever when it comes to employment. By offering a workplace that engages them and provides the tools to advance their careers, you can attract and retain the best talent in the business. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help you create an engaging and successful environment for your team.

The post How to Incentivize Positive Outcomes and Engagement Within Your Staff appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

From a productivity standpoint, implementing these conversations fosters a performance culture and improves the workplace environment.

By adeptly implementing staff evaluations, your team will have yet another tool to succeed. Here’s how to do it right. 

Make It Regular

Some businesses formally review their employees as often as every quarter, while others opt for yearly reviews. Regardless of the frequency you choose, the important thing is to establish a regular review period, allowing your team to know what to expect and when to prepare. 

That said, if your leadership team opts for annual reviews, then you should still conduct less formal check-ins on a monthly basis. This type of meeting will allow you to address smaller, more immediate concerns. Often known as monthly 1:1s, these check-ins help employees understand where they stand and address any issues before the more formal annual review. 

Standardize

When conducting annual reviews, you’ll want to follow the same format each year so team members know what to expect. Additionally, this will help you maintain a level of consistency and ensure you don’t miss any important steps. 

To accomplish this, funeral businesses should develop a written outline for the review format. On this outline, you should note each area in which you’re evaluating team members. For example, you’ll likely want to touch on communication, problem-solving, and punctuality in every team member’s review. 

We also recommend including self-assessment as part of the process. Have employees evaluate themselves prior to the review, then discuss the employee’s self-assessment. From there, the manager can provide additional comments and feedback.

Focus on the Positive

When conducting evaluations of team members, it’s essential to focus on the positive aspects of the review. According to research from Harvard, top-performing teams give each other about 5.6x more positive feedback than negative feedback. That means it’s best to provide employees with almost six positive comments for every piece of criticism.

Even if there are areas where the employee could improve, setting clear expectations and providing a supportive learning environment can turn the feedback into a positive experience rather than criticism.

When providing feedback, it’s important to focus on the work being performed rather than the person. Otherwise, criticism may feel like a personal attack. For example, rather than saying, You are unprofessional, you might consider saying, Your frequent tardiness to team meetings has hindered our ability to work together. 

Along with feedback, take some time to acknowledge and reward everything the employee does well. Employees who understand their strengths can lean into those and continue accomplishing exceptional work in their role.

Provide specific examples when possible. Rather than telling a team member that they consistently demonstrate empathy toward families, point out a particular instance in which they went above and beyond to make a family feel special. Rooting your feedback in specific actions helps your team understand how they can continue to excel where they are strong and troubleshoot areas in which they fall short. 

Receive Feedback

In the same way that you must evaluate your staff, you should also give them an opportunity to evaluate your performance. Being a good manager means ensuring that your team has the tools and resources they need to perform. Receiving feedback from your team will allow you to see how you stand to grow as a leader. 

Often, it’s helpful to request this feedback anonymously, as team members are often hesitant to critique their superiors.

Make an Action Plan

No employee evaluation is complete without a follow-up plan of action. After finishing an employee review, you’ll want to create goals and expectations for the following year.

These goals can take many forms. It may be an opportunity to work on individual challenges, or better align employees toward the goals of the company as a whole.

If an employee has performed exceptionally in their role, you can create a plan for them to take on additional responsibilities. Alternatively, if a team member’s performance has lagged, you can outline expectations they can strive for to improve performance. 

In either case, your leadership should offer the training, tools, and resources the employee needs to succeed. Listening and offering this sort of support is crucial to employee morale and retaining top talent. 

Document Everything

Every component of your staff evaluations should be documented. The evaluation itself, your staff’s feedback for leadership, and the goals you put in place should all be accessible to the relevant members of your team. 

This gives you something to refer to during the next annual review, and it will answer some key questions:

• Did the team member meet their goals?
• Were issues of the last review addressed?
• Did leadership provide the extra support that was promised? 

Annual reviews will provide the benchmarks of success for each of your team members. 

Reward Your Team

In many cases, positive annual reviews will come with a raise or bonus commensurate with the employee’s performance and the overall success of your funeral home. Another way to reward your team members is through introducing incentive compensation plans. By creating a system in which team members are rewarded with bonuses, you can motivate exceptional performance, while aligning them with the companies goals. 

Our team at Johnson Consulting Group, the nation’s leading death care consulting firm, can help your funeral business more effectively manage its people. Whether it’s constructing an incentive compensation plan or helping you implement the best practices of staff evaluation, our experienced team can help you refine the approach of your team. 

The post Annual Reviews: The Ultimate Staff Evaluation Checklist appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

Scottsdale, Arizona – The Memorial Classic’s annual golf event brought in a total of $210,000 in donations for the 2022 year. This number officially brought their grand total of donations to over one million dollars of giving back to the funeral profession over the past 40 years.

The Memorial Classic took place April 24th- 26th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Each year the profession’s finest fly out from across the country to participate in this two day golf event. This year’s event had 107 participants. It’s organized by Tom Johnson, Jake Johnson, Kim Price, Bill Cutter, and the JCG team in efforts to give back to educating the next generation of funeral service.

The donations from this event go directly to the Funeral Service Foundation’s Academic Scholarships as well as ICCFA’s Funeral Trust Foundation. These donations serve to provide educational opportunities, scholarships, supplies and more for those entering or furthering their education in funeral service.

Jim Price, Chairman of the ICCFA Educational Foundation stated, “We are very grateful for all of the support The Memorial Classic provides us. Without it, we would not be able to make education accessible to our profession’s future leaders.”

“The Funeral Service Foundation is grateful for the continued generosity of Johnson Consulting Group, Tom Johnson, Jake Johnson, and all those who support the Foundation via Memorial Classic,” said Foundation Executive Director Lee Wiensch, CAE, CFRE. “Our Memorial Classic Academic Scholarship winners regularly say, ‘Thank you for believing in me.’ We know they will be professional trailblazers, just like those who are remembered each year at the Memorial Classic.”

Tom Johnson, Founder of Johnson Consulting Group, started this event 40 years ago to get friends from the profession together for a few days over golf. Now it’s one of the most successful fundraising events in the profession year after year.

“It’s great to see how a group of people passionate about the future of the profession can make a difference,” says Tom, “We are always grateful for the attendees and their generosity.”

Jake Johnson, CEO of Johnson Consulting Group, has watched this event grow from day one into something everyone looks forward to each year.

“It’s a huge milestone for the event to reach one million dollars in donations,” says Jake, “I am proud of everyone involved who has made this happen year after year.”

About the Funeral Service Foundation – FuneralServiceFoundation.org

Since 1945, the Funeral Service Foundation has served as the profession’s philanthropic voice. As the charitable arm of the National Funeral Directors Association since 1997, the Foundation receives operational support from NFDA and donors across the profession to help advance its mission to support funeral service in building meaningful relationships with the families and the communities it serves.

About the ICCFA Educational Foundation

The ICCFA Educational Foundation, founded in 2005, seeks to make education accessible to the future leaders of the deathcare profession. It does this by awarding scholarships to the educational programs of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, as well as advancing initiatives designed to promote the profession and support the individuals who answer the call of service. The ICCFA Educational Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity.

About Johnson Consulting Group

Johnson Consulting Group is committed to providing intelligent business solutions that address succession, operational, financial, and customer service needs within funeral homes and cemeteries. JCG has been creating personalized partnerships and growing revenue with funeral and cemetery business owners, managers, and staff for over two decades with solutions including succession planning services, financial management & accounting services, and professional cemetery & funeral home consulting.  For more information, visit www.johnsonconsulting.com to learn more.

The post The Memorial Classic Reaches One Million Dollars in All-Time Donations After 2022’s Event appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

For a marketing plan to work, you first need to identify goals, set a strategy, and know what data markers to track along the way so you know what to do more of.

Sound like a lot of work? Can be. The good news is there are a lot of marketing tools and software that can help make your marketing easier and more efficient. More on that at the end of this post. First, let’s get a handle on goals and strategy.

Ready, set….GOAL

Marketing without set goals is like driving somewhere new without directions. You might get there in the end but there’s a good chance you’re not going to take the best route, it’s going to take you longer, and you probably won’t know how to repeat the trip. Setting clear goals for each marketing decision makes it easier to evaluate what’s working.

Some common marketing goals are:

• Get your name out: Let new families in the community know who you are.
• Increase engagement: Nurture relationships with your current families and social media followers by interacting with them.
• Make something happen: Determine what action you want people to take. Some examples are getting them to call you, subscribe to a newsletter, or click on your website.
• Find new families: Track and evaluate the interactions of a person with your brand to determine whether they’re likely to be interested in your services

Once you’ve got a goal set, create a strategy to support it. One marketing strategy, that works well in the funeral profession, centers around content. This is sometimes called content marketing. With this strategy, you provide useful information to your community, and that information helps builds a relationship with individuals who see it, read it, and interact with it.

It’s important to write content that interests your community and aligns with your goal. A “Get your name out” pieces of content might focus on donations you’ve made, service opportunities your firm participates in or something relatable celebrating your staff. Whereas “Make something happen” content might focus on the importance of preplanning and how to get started.

Try to think of topics that would be useful, relatable, or thought provoking to them. Here’s a few topic ideas to help you out.

• Honoring veterans and first responders
• Grief and healing
• Holidays
• End-of-life planning
• Cremation services
• Staff tributes
• Updates to your facility
• Steps to take after a death

Pro tip: Include a picture or video along with your writing. Imagery and video improve engagement. Being Photos and videos relevant to your community, your funeral home, and your staff tend to get the most clicks.

Make friends with your data

It begs to be repeated; data should inform your marketing decisions. Data can tell you whether or not you are reaching your families, what needs improvement, and how to reach people better in the future. Here’s 3 examples of marketing data that you can use for your funeral home’s marketing.

Social media engagement

Most funeral homes have a Facebook account. Facebook includes a wealth of data about post and ad campaign performance.

Some key data points to track include:

• Social reach – The number of people who saw your post or ad. Watch this over time and see what type of posts get the best reaction.
• Social engagement – How many people interacted with your post, page, or ad. Interactions will vary based on the size of your community, the age of your community, etc. But compare engagement among your posts and ads and stick with what gets the best engagement.
• Contacts collected – If you run Facebook ads (and you should!), contacts collected are the number of people who gave you their contact information. Track which posts or ad campaigns collected the most contacts.
• Cost per lead – How much each new contact costs you. At Funeral innovations we’ve seen leads cost between $4-13. If you are over that number (or even running on the high side) turn your ad off and try a different topic, audience, or fresh content.

Email open rate

Writing takes time. And you want to be sure people are reading what you send out. That’s why you need to track email open rates. At Funeral Innovations, we regularly see open rates around 25% among all our clients for newsletters. Nurturing emails on specific topics people requested rank higher, closer to 50%. Strive for this. If you’re not hitting the mark, try new content and a new subject line.

Often a catchy subject line is the biggest driver to a good open rate. Some useful tricks include starting with an action verb, personalizing the subject line with the name of who you’re emailing, and keeping it short and concise. This will help increase the number of families who actively open and read your emails.

Website Interactions

All roads lead to Rome, or in your case, to your website. It’s more than likely that your families will visit your website – not just once – but multiple times before they decide on your funeral home. That means each of these visits gives you data on their interactions with your content there. Use this data to improve your website.

Here are some to watch below:

• Organic Traffic – The number of visitors to your website from unpaid sources, like a Google search. These people have shown intent to find your business without clicking on an ad.
• Bounce rate – This means how many people are clicking on your website and leaving immediately. If your bounce rate is high, consider taking a look at your design, loading speed and whether your content matches what families are looking for.
• Conversion rate – This Is the percentage of visitors that complete a desired action. Common activities to track are newsletter signups, forms filled out, and product purchases.
• Contacts collected – Just like on Facebook, you can also measure the number people who gave you their contact information through your website. Track what pages and forms are collecting the most.

What is marketing automation and what does it do

The funeral industry is a busy one and most funeral directors don’t have spare time to mess around with their marketing. Tools like marketing automation software can save you a whole lot of time. 

As the name suggests, marketing automation software sends and tracks your marketing content for you. That way you have one place to log into and check on your email campaigns, social media posts, newsletters etc. Plus, marketing automation software can show you data across social, email, and even your website so you get all the data you need in one place.

There are many other handy tools marketing automation software offers including pre-made content galleries, content calendars with prescheduled posts, automatic text or email responses, and marketing data analytics.

These tools can be used to:

• Schedule content like social media posts to automatically run on a set date and time
• Track families and their interactions with your social media, website and ads to determine their interest in your funeral home.
• View data on your current marketing to see how it is performing

In the end…

Make sure you’re reaching your families and that you’re doing it right. Having clear, concise goals will help you develop a strategy and content that is both useful and relatable to your audience. Remember that you don’t have to do it all by yourself and that getting the right tools, like marketing automation, will make your marketing stress-free.

Growth Engine

Growth Engine by Funeral Innovations is a marketing automation software made specifically for the funeral industry to assist funeral directors in growing their marketing and therefore growing their business.

Talk content here: creating content, where to get ideas [GU1]

The post Not Seeing Results with Your Marketing? Here’s How to Get Back on Track appeared first on Johnson Consulting Group.

Now more than ever, keeping track of client satisfaction levels should be a high priority for your business. Customer surveys can help you evaluate if arrangement and service adjustments are meeting expectations, and how well your staff is doing overall. Here are the Top 5 reasons why funeral homes should survey their families during this health crisis:

To Assess Customer Experience

The 2020 pandemic has fundamentally changed how funeral services are arranged, which means that the general customer experience will be very different compared to what funeral directors have seen in previous years. One of the best ways to understand what families are going through during this health crisis is to request feedback via user-friendly surveys. After all, if you really want to know what a customer is thinking you should simply ask them.

Many funeral homes use automatic survey tools to obtain responses from families, and some funeral directors openly ask for an honest review in person. With either method, the main objective should be to elicit descriptive comments and opinions that help improve customer service levels and build a loyal client base going forward.

To Source Ideas for Growth

Evaluating a family’s overall satisfaction with your funeral home is essential to understanding what works well vs. what doesn’t. To get an idea of which strategies are successful, consider using surveys to evaluate whether or not you are meeting customer expectations on a regular basis. Keep in mind that the COVID-19 crisis is causing some families to make rushed decisions and choose fewer services, and this unfortunate trend may continue even once the emergency tapers off. Funeral homes will need to be proactive in developing new and effective ways to reach families based on customer feedback, case mix and revenue projections.

To Analyze Gaps in Customer Knowledge

Customer surveys often reveal what people really think about your business. Their responses also provide crucial information regarding unseen gaps in consumer knowledge about the products and services your funeral home offers. For example, families who have lost a loved one to the coronavirus disease may ask for direct cremation only because they don’t know that they can hold a formal service before or after cremation. Professionally-written surveys can disclose key findings that inform the need for additional education and/or marketing to keep families current on their available options for saying a final goodbye.

To Improve Staff Training

Customer surveys can be customized to enhance staff training and improve performance. Survey responses offer insights into the arrangement conference and show exactly how much information families receive — these real-time results can help your staff focus on specific aspects of the funeral experience like financing, payment plans and empathy, and encourage them to reinforce these ideas with every family no matter the circumstances. This is especially important during the current health crisis when many families are under pressure to choose something (or anything) as quickly as possible. A well-trained arranger should be able to guide family members towards a decision that works well for everyone while still meeting sales performance targets.

To Refine Aftercare Programs

Funeral aftercare is just as important as pre-need or at-need care. Even during a pandemic when time and resources are very limited, funeral providers should make an effort to follow up with bereaved families to see how they are coping with their loss and to offer additional sympathy and care as necessary. Sending surveys after the service to ask for feedback can provide relevant information about overall satisfaction and average sales, and is also a great way to ask families to provide testimonials and/or reviews. Customer reviews are vital to your funeral home’s reputation and help establish a loyal community of future customers.

How to Use Customer Surveys

Evaluate your sales performance and stay connected with your families by using the Johnson Consulting Group Performance Tracker — an industry-leading survey tool that empowers funeral home owners to run a more profitable business and provide a better experience for their families. Please call us today to learn more.

Lori Salberg
Director of Technology

Lori joined Johnson Consulting Group in 2017, bringing experience in cemetery, funeral home, and pre-need sales management. Along with sales and operations management, Lori directed the development of two propriety cemetery and funeral home enterprise software systems. Lori began her career in 2001 as a Family Service Counselor for the Catholic Cemeteries in San Jose. She quickly moved into management and rose to Associate Director of three cemetery locations. In 2010, Lori furthered her career as General Manager of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery and Holy Angels Funeral and Cremation Center in Hayward, CA, where she also joined the Catholic Management Services leadership team. As Director of Administration and IT, Lori brought management expertise and software solutions to cemetery and funeral home clients. In 2015, Lori joined PlotBox as VP of Sales. Lori contributed to the development of a SaaS cemetery software program, and was principally responsible for introducing it to the US market. She is a frequent speaker at many state and regional industry events and an article contributor to many industry magazines. She is also a member of the ICCFA Sales and Marketing Committee, which plans and oversees the Annual World Wide Sales Conference each January. Lori balances her passion for helping clients prepare for the future with raising her three children, Catalina, JJ, and Lyla. She spends a lot of weekends at dance competitions and little league baseball tournaments.

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 The Harsh Reality

“People don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers.”  If leaders and those in positions of power can take this quote by Marcus Buckingham to heart, I believe we would see so much more retention amongst our profession.

Here are some harsh realities:

• According to a survey done by Deloitte, 49% will leave their job in two years.
• com says that in 2020 2 out of 3 plan to leave their job.
• Gallup reports that 21% have left their jobs within the last year, which costs the economy $30.5 billion annually.
• Bank Rate states that 69% of millennials have a side hustle.

These are some powerful statistics that mean if we aren’t encouraging a culture of growth, this next generation has no problem going to find it elsewhere.

Employee Engagement

How connected do you think your employees are to your company? If we are being honest with ourselves, there are plenty of areas we can improve in this category.

According to a study done by Gallup in 2017, 230,000 employees were surveyed in 142 countries on their current engagement. Employees fall into one of three categories:

• Engaged
• Not Engaged
• Actively Disengaged

Only 13% of employees they surveyed were truly passionate and motivated by the work they did every day. An astounding 63% were not engaged, and 24% were actively disengaged.

The impact of a disengaged employee can negatively impact your business in the following ways:

• They’ll be cutting corners, which results in poor decision making
• There will be no drive and no focus, which results in less creativity
• They simply don’t care, which results in negative customer reviews
• Less productivity requires more staff, which results in over-hiring with a lower ROI.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do about the actively disengaged. They just need a path out. However, the statistics show that around 63% have the potential to be engaged if we put the effort in to putting meaning behind what they are doing.

What category would you put most of your employees in? Do they fall into the popular category not engaged? Maybe it’s time to rethink how you’re motivating your employees.  Do you share a common purpose that they can buy into with passion? How often do you give praise? Could it be time to put more incentive compensation plans in place? Purpose and incentive are the keys to motivating engagement.

Once we have worked to get our employees into the “engaged” category, the positive benefits have an astounding impact. Statistics show that 50% will post messages on social media and 24% are more likely to help boost sales than disengaged employees. Find ways to bring meaning back so that your employees live in the engaged category, and your firm is guaranteed to reap the benefits.

Create Your Plan

Hire the Right People. Obviously, all this talk about having engaged employees is only possible if we hire the right people from the get-go that are naturally motivated. Service attitude is a big thing we look for at JCG. Recognize if they have the natural ability to go above and beyond to exceed a customer’s expectations. Are they good listeners, do they care, are they genuinely interested in other people and have a desire to always be learning? You can teach service aptitude (the ability recognize service opportunities), but you can’t teach attitude (the desire to serve).

Onboarding and Training: Develop a welcome program that makes them remember their first day. Decorate their desk with a welcome sign, write an internal spotlight, or take them to lunch with your team. Remember, their first day of work is one way to set the tone for their engagement. Spend a lot of effort on helping them to understand WHY you do what you do and how they bring value to that purpose. The first few weeks are critical to employee engagement. The more they buy in early, the more likely they are to want to stick around.

Initial training an on-going training is essential to employee engagement. You must teach them skills to be successful. Have a minimum standard for customer service expectations in writing and don’t train just once. Reinforce the expectations as often as weekly. This includes modeling, observing, and measuring behavior.

Retention and Relationships: Employees are more engaged when they are recognized, so communicate! Provide for feedback, and even ask for feedback yourself. Peer recognition is another way to keep employees engaged. Set up a quarterly award that gets everyone involved to recognize their peers. Feedback is the key, as this next generation craves it.

So where should we start? A good place to assess where your engagement is at is to survey your staff about their happiness at work. Ask about if they feel valued, and if they appreciate the kind of feedback they get.

It might be a rude awakening, but we all have to start somewhere. Getting the data is the only way you can grow from today into reaping the benefits of having engaged employees long into.

Lori Salberg
Director of Technology

Lori joined Johnson Consulting Group in 2017, bringing experience in cemetery, funeral home, and pre-need sales management. Along with sales and operations management, Lori directed the development of two propriety cemetery and funeral home enterprise software systems. Lori began her career in 2001 as a Family Service Counselor for the Catholic Cemeteries in San Jose. She quickly moved into management and rose to Associate Director of three cemetery locations. In 2010, Lori furthered her career as General Manager of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery and Holy Angels Funeral and Cremation Center in Hayward, CA, where she also joined the Catholic Management Services leadership team. As Director of Administration and IT, Lori brought management expertise and software solutions to cemetery and funeral home clients. In 2015, Lori joined PlotBox as VP of Sales. Lori contributed to the development of a SaaS cemetery software program, and was principally responsible for introducing it to the US market. She is a frequent speaker at many state and regional industry events and an article contributor to many industry magazines. She is also a member of the ICCFA Sales and Marketing Committee, which plans and oversees the Annual World Wide Sales Conference each January. Lori balances her passion for helping clients prepare for the future with raising her three children, Catalina, JJ, and Lyla. She spends a lot of weekends at dance competitions and little league baseball tournaments.

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