June 20, 2023
Written by Kaley Young, Passare Account Executive
Four days at a convention. Six hours in an expo hall.
You’d be amazed at the number of things a person can learn in so little time.
Last week at the Texas Funeral Directors Association Annual Convention, my team had countless conversations with funeral directors about how they use Passare to improve business processes and connect with their families in new ways.
Austin, me and Vasti after setting up the Passare booth at this year's TFDA convention!
I thought I’d take a moment to share my favorite (and the most useful!) tech tips from Texas funeral directors over the years. Hopefully, these Texas-sized tips can help you improve processes at your funeral home: 👇
#1: Nothing beats real-time reporting.
If you have multiple rooftops, you know the struggle of trying to get up-to-date information across all of your locations. Not to mention, keeping everyone on the same page with communication is a challenge.
For full business insights, you need software that has real-time reporting and visibility into all areas of your business.
Jayme Broussard Toeppich at Broussard’s Mortuary understood the need for accurate reporting and how it improved communication when we interviewed her years ago:
“Passare has also increased our awareness and our communication amongst our locations. In the past, there may have been some disconnect about the kind of business that we were doing, and it took a long time to get accurate reporting. Passare has helped our reporting tremendously. Now we have reports with just the click of a button. It’s more real-time reporting.”
Read Jayme’s full testimonial here.
Real-time reporting? Real cool if you ask me. 😎
#2: Get software that plays well with others.
Funeral home software takes all your case information and puts it into one place for easy access. But what about when you need to take that information and re-enter it elsewhere, like onto your website?
Re-entering all that data takes hours away from the families you’re trying to serve.
What you need is a software that plays well with others. What we mean by that is, a software that integrates with your other services to save you time on data entry.
One example of this is our integration with Answering Service for Directors (ASD). All first call information picked up from ASD is pushed directly into Passare so a case is automatically created, saving you from having to re-enter that information later.
Listen to this story about how Matt Smith from Fry-Smith Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Tuscola, Texas, used our ASD integration to get the job done, even when he was away from the funeral home:
“About five years ago when we were having our TFDA convention down in Austin, TX, I got a first call. We’re a small one-man funeral home here. The answering service took the first call. I turned around and called the family, fired up the laptop right there in the hotel, and started the actual process of bringing them onto Passare. I got their email address, sent them the collaboration invite, and had all that taken care of. When I got back home, I was immediately able to sit down and start the process for the arrangements for the funeral service.”
Watch Matt’s full testimonial of Passare:
If your software doesn’t play well with others, boot it from the team. We promise we’re not a ball hog. 😉
See our full list of integrations here.
#3: Center your arrangement conferences around stories, not paperwork.
The key to a healing funeral is personalization. But the only way to learn about what made a loved one unique is to hear from those who knew them best.
But if completing basic information eats up your time with a family, you won't have a chance to create a personalized service.
Family collaboration software like Passare’s Planning Center gives you more quality time with families so you can:
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Get vitals and other details before the arrangement conference
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Easily gather photos submitted by the family and work on the obituary in real time
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Stay engaged with the family throughout the entire planning process
Texas Funeral Director Michael Capehart shares his experience using Planning Center to serve his families:
“My all-time favorite feature is Planning Center. We offer Planning Center to every single family…I would say about 80-85% of the time, the families who use Planning Center will log on and work on at least a portion of the vital statistics, the obituary, and service details.”
Read Michael’s full testimonial of Passare here.
Want to tour the Planning Center? See how it works here.
Get the software Texas funeral homes are using to improve their funeral homes
You don’t deserve to spend another second wasting time with software that doesn’t work for your funeral home. Take the advice from Jayme, Matt, and Michael, and use software loved by Texas funeral directors.
Get a demo today!