Fayette Memorial Funeral Home & Crematory
Location: La Grange, TX
Call Volume: 75 Calls/Year
John Urban serves as a funeral director at Fayette Memorial Funeral Home & Crematory in Texas, and his funeral home was one of the first to sign up with Passare. At the time, they were looking for a software that would help them increase efficiency and provide state-of-the-art communication with their families. Passare’s cloud-based case management system stood out, and since then, the funeral home has benefited from several new updates, especially the new credit card feature.
When I do a death call, I will start everything in the Planning Center, so all the information is there, and anyone can pull it up and know where we’re at in the process with that family. Even if I’m not there in person, another staff member can just take over, as opposed to calling me or digging through folders for the paperwork. Sometimes, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for because things can look different from case to case based on who’s notating what and where. But with Passare, it’s all there, and it’s organized the same way for every case.
Plus, having all the information filled out in the Planning Center beforehand saves a lot of time. It’s as smooth as a preneed! We get to talk about what they want for the service, rather than having to collect information for 45 minutes before we even get started. Nobody wants to be at a funeral home that long! After that much time, the family doesn’t even want to look at caskets or hear about a vault. They don’t want to hear about anything else. By the time they get around to selecting the merchandise, they want to get out of the funeral home. So, it’s great to get that part of it out of the way. It’s a big time-saver.
Also, when families use the Planning Center to work through their funeral, they are familiar with the software when you pull it up to make a payment. They are already comfortable with it.
I’ll answer that question with a story. We had a family who was running late to a funeral. They were going to come and pay beforehand, but time didn’t allow for it. When they arrived, they were talking to the pastor, and other people were greeting them. It wasn’t a good time to ask them for payment. Then, they remembered at the cemetery and said, “Oh, I haven’t paid you.” So, I got to the payment center on my smart phone and took a payment at the cemetery.
It’s one of those things we just love, taking payments anywhere. I’ve also had our terminal go down when a credit card was the family’s only form of payment. At that moment, we were able to use the credit card feature to save the day.
Well, I have another story for you. We have a link on our website that families can use to start their own case. On a Friday evening, we had someone do that, fill in all their information in the Planning Center for an imminent need case. I called them on Monday just to make contact. “Hey, I see you started this case,” I said, and they told me a little more about what they wanted, so I discussed the price with them and emailed them a breakdown of what they wanted and what it would cost. That Friday, we got a check in the mail, and we’re all going, “What is this for?” Then the name hits me. The person hadn’t even died yet, and they sent a check in for the funeral. So, we weren’t sure whether to process it as a preneed or what to do. Well, the person died that weekend, so we just held onto the check and processed it after the death as a regular at-need case. But it was all done through a self-started case on our website and over the phone. That was pretty incredible. But the point is, that was how that family was comfortable communicating, and it was a seamless process with Passare.
Your customer service is great. Real people answer the phone, and I think the longest hold time I’ve had is 30 seconds. That is unheard of for most companies nowadays. So many places are automated, and you type in your account number. Then you hit the wrong menu option, hang up and go through 10 minutes of menus again. It takes a long time to finally talk to a human. That’s never been my experience with your customer service.
The best thing about Passare is that the family can do half of your job for you. If you click a couple of buttons and send them a link to the Planning Center, they will fill out their information for you, and you can walk in and print everything out you need and be done. In those cases, you get to just talk to them about their loved one and build a relationship with them. Then, they’re asking you what they can do to make the service more special and what types of merchandise you recommend, so you are not having to try to tell them that they need this or that. That’s the biggest selling point for it.
I like that it’s personalized management software. It’s not cookie-cutter management software. There are so many things you can make specific for your funeral home and how you want it to look, like the at-need contracts we print out. With a lot of the management software out there, you couldn’t tell the difference between two funeral homes using it, but with Passare, every funeral home’s software is going to look different because they build it exactly the way that you need it to be.
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