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Spotlight: Hoff Funeral & Cremation Services

Passare customers share their secrets of success through collaboration

Hoff Funeral & Cremation Services
Locations: Winona, Goodview, Lewiston, Rushford, Houston, and St. Charles, Minnesota
Call Volume: 250 Calls/Year

For more information, contact tim@hofffuneral.com, ashley@hofffuneral.com, or tyler@hofffuneral.com.

Tim Hoff, owner and funeral director at Hoff Funeral & Cremation Services, and funeral directors Ashley and Tyler Hoff use Passare to stay up-to-date and organized across multiple locations. Passare helps them save time and gives them the opportunity to work closely as a team with internal collaboration as well as collaboration with the families they serve.

How has Passare affected how you collaborate as a team?

Tim: As we continue to leverage more and more of Passare’s capabilities, we have realized that certain tools, such as the Passare notes and checklists, help us work better together on cases. We’re really looking forward to seeing more of how these administrative tools in Passare can help us enhance our internal collaboration and help us increase our efficiency as a team.

Ashley: From the bookkeeping side, it’s convenient that everything is in one place for all of our locations. This way, we can work together as a team on cases and answer a family’s question about a case quickly and easily without having to drive to a location to access a paper file. Everything is right there for us in Passare, so it’s easy to stay organized.

Have your found that using Passare helps you save time?

Tyler: We have several locations in close proximity, so sometimes a funeral director from one location will travel 20 minutes to work at another location when needed. Passare now allows that funeral director to log in at home or at any computer to check the status of the case without traveling to pick up a paper file. It’s a big time-saver. I also like that I can log in anywhere when a family calls or I need to check a case. I can just log into the system, look it up in about 5 seconds, and just get it done right away. What’s even better is that, after you fill in initial information, you can click a form, hit print, and you’re done, since the software automatically populates the form with the information already provided. With Passare, I probably spend about 20-25% less time on each arrangement. And when our families use the Planning Center to its full extent, the time spent on an arrangement is nearly cut in half.

How do you see families interacting on Passare?

Tyler: We try to get every family member an invitation for Passare during their first call. It might take a while for some people to feel comfortable on the software—in fact, we’ve seen families use Passare best after the arrangement conference—but, by introducing it at the beginning, they have the option to get started right away. The cloud-based software is perfect for families who can’t all be in the same place at the same time. They can work on the obituary online and see changes as they are made and discuss options using the chat feature.

Would you recommend Passare to other funeral directors?

Tyler: We have found that around 1 out of 3 families will interact with us through Passare today. Those that do really latch onto the idea of communicating online very quickly, especially Baby Boomers. As we begin serving more and more Baby Boomers, I’m certain that the demand for something like Passare will continue to increase, and we want to be prepared to serve those customers. As a funeral director, it’s worth your time to give it a try. Once you get a family engaged in the Planning Center, your work is going to be so much easier. You can’t measure the success of something like this without first trying it.

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