My second phone call from Lawyer/CPA Bob was really just an “Aha!” message saying he would accept the bet I offered in the post, An FCA Affiliate Speaks Up.

Except my exact quote was “I’d be willing to bet…” which, in simple English, means “I would be willing…with certain conditions.”

Here’s what I actually wrote:

I’d be willing to bet my salary and Mr. Slocum’s almost $50,000 salary  that Lawyer/CPA Bob doesn’t get out of bed at 2 AM for anything close to what the average funeral director makes.

In fact, the phrase “I’d be willing to bet” or “I’d bet” are common figures of speech or colloquialisms and are understood by most English speakers to be non-literal exaggerations.

Do we believe that a teenager who says “If I have to get braces I’ll die!” is actually afraid they will kill her?

Or that a man who proclaims a new device as “the best thing since sliced bread” is serious about the implications to society of the new gadget?

Should Lawyer/CPA Bob claim that I made an actual bet, I’d point out that the bet is difficult to distinguish.  Is he claiming that he does get out of bed at 2:00 AM for a sum close to what the average funeral director makes?

If so, we’ll have to figure out what the average funeral director makes.  Then we have to see how close Lawyer/CPA Bob’s salary is to the amount.

Of course, “close” is relative.  How will we determine if the amounts are “close?”  Is there an international designation for the specific amount the term implies?

And would Lawyer/CPA Bob have to prove that he actually gets up at 2:00 AM on a regular basis (at least as often as the typical funeral director does) or would proof of a few late nights a month be good enough for a court of law?

And who enforces bets?  Are we in Las Vegas, Reno or Atlantic City? 

I’d be interested in hearing some legal opinion on how a rhetorical comment in a editorial could be construed as an actual bet.

I’d almost bet… oops, can’t say that.  I’m fairly certain (in a non-threatening, editorial way) that I’ve got some protection under the First Amendment.  I also believe that I have not threatened or libeled Mr. Slocum, Ms. Bennett or Lawyer/CPA Bob in any way.

Mr. Slocum responded with well-reasoned emails and an invitation to call him if I wanted to talk more about his company.  Ms. Bennett offered her opinion and asked me “Since when is that wrong?”  I offered my opinion back to her in the post, An FCA Affiliate Speaks Up.

Now Lawyer/CPA Bob decides that mildly-harrassing phone calls, placed from a “restricted” number, are appropriate to the conversation.  He’s clearly calling for personal reasons, as he won’t reveal his last name or contact information.

He’s wrong.  Frankly, the only reason I can imagine that he would make such calls and vague quasi-threats is that it gives him some pleasure to intimidate others.

I am not intimidated, but  I understand his initial viewpoint:  he likes Mr. Slocum.

I’ll grant that many people may like Mr. Slocum.  Heck, after a conversation, I might like Mr. Slocum. 

But Lawyer/CPA Bob decided to sink to harrassment, while my main complaint remains the same:  FCA’s primary public interaction (with non-members - the vast majority of Americans) is fear-based.  FCA is best served when they get stories placed in news sources that scare the public into signing up for memberships or buying publications.

When 70% of your annual expenses pay employee-related costs (salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, etc.) the main purpose of your organization is to fund employees.

Are the employees still doing the work of the organization?  Gosh, I hope so.  Otherwise, they’d just be stealing from their members.

I’m sure that Mr. Slocum and others within local FCA’s believe they are doing important work.  Unfortunately, they equate choosing a funeral home based upon price as the most intelligent and savvy move.

They reinforce this by falsely accusing the majority of funeral directors of being greedy or crooks.

I disagree with that remark and I encourage all funeral directors to educate your community.

If you don’t, FCA will.  And Clearly, based upon FCA’s tax returns, it pays to do so.

At the request of another reader, here is the information I was able to glean from People’s Memorial Assocation’s 2006 tax return, obtained from Guidestar and attached here:  peoples-memorial

$ 282,516   total expenses for 2006
$ 108,822   employee expense (salary, retirement, benefits, payroll taxes, etc.)
$173,694  to spend on program expenses

$ 282,516  total expenses for 2006
$ 208,099  revenue
$ 74,417  loss for the year

$ 20,417  dues paid to the national FCA (Mr. Slocum’s group)

How do they compare with the national FCA for the same time period?

PEOPLE’S MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION
38.5% of total expenses spent on employee salary/benefits/taxes
52.1% of revenue spent on employee salary/benefits/taxes

NATIONAL FUNERAL CONSUMERS ALLIANCE 
70.6% of total expenses spent on employee salary/benefits/taxes
84.9% of revenue spent on employee salary/benefits/taxes

 How about comparing them to the Red Cross?  Here’s their 2006 tax return:  red-cross

AMERICAN RED CROSS
30.5% of total expenses spent on employee salary/benefits/taxes
28.5% of revenue spent on employee salary/benefits/taxes

Ruth Bennett, of the People’s Memorial Association in Washington State, responds to our recent posts, Is The Funeral Consumer’s Alliance More “Predatory” Than the Funeral Industry Itself? and FCA’s Slocum and I (Hopefully) Have a Civilized Debate, with this comment:

As President of a nonprofit funeral cooperative, I know that we can provide a direct cremation for a family for $649. Other corporate owned funeral homes in the area charge from $1500 to $3500. Yes, we are a nonprofit, but that does not mean that we don’t need to cover our costs and provide a reserve, which we do, very well, at our significantly lower prices.

Too many, no all, but too many funeral homes guilt families into spending more than they can afford. If a family can afford to and wants to spend $25,000 on a funeral, then we support that decision, but to call that a “traditional” funeral and to make a family feel bad for not overspending is, at best, disingenious.

FCA and its affiliates provide truthful and useful information to families. Since when is that wrong?

Of course, Ms. Bennett, it’s not wrong to educate consumers.  I just wish you were telling them the truth.

You provide direct cremation for $649.  There are people in Florida who will do it for $399.  Why does your coop charge almost double for the same service?

Your own survey of 170 funeral homes (conducted in 2007) shows a range from $425 to $2800.  Why the $244 difference?

And how many cremations must you perform to cover your overhead?

I will never, ever begrudge a hardworking funeral professional the right to charge their own price in their own community.  And so I can’t really complain that you charge $649 to your members.

I would, however, be really upset if I was not a member of your organization and had to pay $150 more for a cremation.  (Link to pricing on the cooperative’s website)

How do you justify that big a difference, if it only costs $50 to become a member?  (Link to membership page)

(LONG PAUSE AS I ANSWER A TELEPHONE CALL)

Just got a phone call from a lawyer who’s clients are “1/2 to 3/4 FCA groups”.  I’m guessing he does some work for you, Ms. Bennett.  He was able to quickly quote how many members you have (100,000 according to his count).

Lawyer Bob (he wouldn’t share his last name or contact information and called from a “restricted” number) was pretty upset and started out the conversation by asking “what do you have against Joshua Slocum?”

He went on to share that Joshua does nothing but good work and that he gets knocked around a lot by the big, bad funeral industry.

Lawyer Bob also questioned my ability to read a tax return.  Turns out he’s also CPA Bob.

Then he got so upset that he told me he was going to make this topic a story in his client newsletter and that he was going to share this with his friends at the Pennsylvania Bar Assocation meeting for Eldercare lawyers, because whenever he gets an estate that’s been probated, the funeral home has ripped off the client by playing on their emotions and selling them things they don’t need because no one comes to their funerals.

He also pointed out that while there are only 22,000+ funerals in the U.S., there are hundreds of thousands of FCA members who clearly, in his mind, are going to win.

I reminded Bob that when each of those hundreds of thousands of members die, they’re not calling a CPA or lawyer at 2:00 AM to pick them up.  They’ll be calling a funeral director.

I’d be willing to bet my salary and Mr. Slocum’s almost $50,000 salary  that Lawyer/CPA Bob doesn’t get out of bed at 2 AM for anything close to what the average funeral director makes.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  The phrase “I’d be willing to bet” does not constitute an actual bet, which is illegal in my state (Florida).  Lawyer/CPA Bob just called to ask me if I’d actually bet him that amount.  Of course, when pressed for details about his experiences, he hung up.  I’m waiting for Lawyer/CPA Bob to share with me even one instance when he’s gotten out of bed at 2:00 am to help a grieving family.  I’d also like to see his own tax returns to compare his salary with industry standard for funeral professionals.

In response to our posts, Is The Funeral Consumer’s Alliance More “Predatory” Than the Funeral Industry Itself? and FCA’s Slocum and I (Hopefully) Have a Civilized Debate, New York State funeral director Michelle Carter writes:

Mr. Slocum wrote: “You may not like FCA’s message of consumer education and empowerment, but that does not give you the right to make untrue statements about how we operate.”

As a funeral director, I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing that our client families in general were better-educated about the funeral process and what their options are. A significant portion of every dealing with every family involves explaining all the options available to them so they can make the most informed decision possible.

Unfortunately, the number of families we deal with who have been misinformed and are confused about their options and costs seems to be growing, not shrinking. I blame part of this on the numerous websites and organizations like the FCA that make broad statements like, “Well, in most places you can do X, Y and Z…” but make no effort to provide information about specific statues. Every state has different laws and options vary significantly depending on where you are.

Like Tim, I also take exception with the FCA’s apparent belief that “low-cost” and “good” go hand in hand when it comes to funeral service. While that is sometimes true, it’s also true (as in every other industry) that you often get what you pay for.

If cost were the only thing people were concerned with, we’d probably all be driving around in Geo Metros. However, every individual and every family has different tastes, desires, and needs, and all of those things will influence how much they spend, and what they spend it on.

And I wonder why there is no mention in the FCA literature I’ve seen that the increases in funeral prices over the last 25 years have not kept pace with inflation. 25 years ago, funeral homes made around 11.5% profit on each funeral, according to American Funeral Director Magazine, compared to the roughly 6.12% in 2007. Expenses have grown 23% more than income has. By comparison, the average new home price has increased over 264% during that same period.

Mr. Slocum wrote, “If the worst elements of funeral service don’t reflect your business practices, why are you personally offended? Don’t you agree those elements should be exposed so honest businesspeople can separate themselves from scoundrels? You could do a lot more to help that cause by working with us than by snarking at a consumer charity.”

I agree with Tim on this point: in our capitalist society, the funeral homes or directors that take advantage of families, charge exorbitantly high prices or are otherwise bad will not stay in business that way for long. Word of mouth travels fast. However, when you’re part of an industry that gets slammed, of course you’re going to take offense. It’s the same as when good police officers, good mechanics, and good doctors are offended by those who paint them with the same brush as they paint the bad apples. It puts you in the position of being guilty until proven innocent.

But I’m also skeptical of the assertion that there are funeral directors who are giving extra discounts to members of the FCA. The funeral home’s expenses will remain the same, regardless of how much of a discount they offer. So are they making that up in overall higher prices? Are they charging non-member families more to make up for it? Is that fair?

I knew of a funeral director (no longer in business) whose GPL showed outlandishly high prices. However, he offered families a discount of 15-20% if they paid their bills before the day of the funeral. Personally, I’d rather work with someone whose pricing is straightforward and not so gimmicky.

As someone who sits on the board of a local charity, I also have issues with any organization that calls itself a charity, but spends so much of its income on overhead. The Red Cross has gotten flack for spending just $0.10 of every dollar on administrative costs, but it appears that for the FCA, that amount is significantly higher.

I think we can all agree that we want our consumer families to make the best, most well-informed decisions possible. The question is whether or not they are hearing all sides of the story.

Michelle Carter is the former owner of the Center For Transition, a grief counseling and funeral consulting company.  A licensed funeral director, Michelle is now the Assistant Manager of the E.O. Curry Funeral Home in Peekskill, NY.

In response to the post, Is The Funeral Consumer’s Alliance More “Predatory” Than the Funeral Industry Itself?, Executive Director of the Funeral Consumer’s Alliance, Joshua Slocum, commented like this:

You may not like FCA’s message of consumer education and empowerment, but that does not give you the right to make untrue statements about how we operate.

You wrote:

“Maybe that’s because his organization’s 2006 tax return shows a $28,000+ loss and almost $120,000 in salaries/benefits paid to employees and officers.”

Please return to our Form 990 for 2006 (the IRS’ equivalent of a tax return for nonprofit organizations) and you’ll see:

A. We paid $111,896.54 in wages and benefits to three employees (including me), not $120,000. I don’t see how anyone could say such wages are excessive.

B. There was no - zero - money paid to “officers.” Our Board of Directors serves without pay. It’s hard to see how you could have missed that, considering that on page 4 of our return, we note “officers and directors are
not paid.”

Funeral Consumers Alliance has existed for decades before I joined them, and will exist long after I’m gone. Formed in 1963, we are a federation of 100 nonprofit groups, run largely by volunteers, with a membership approaching 400,000. Our goals have always been to educate the public on their legal rights and options in
the funeral transaction and to ensure they know how to find ethical, reasonably priced funeral providers.

Of course the entire funeral industry isn’t corrupt. Our affiliated groups have found hundreds of upstanding funeral homes local to them who are willing to serve our members and the public at fair prices for quality service. By the same token, there are deep problems in the funeral industry that come together to make
the funeral transaction more difficult, more mysterious, and more costly than it needs to be for families. Accusing FCA of scaremongering isn’t going to change that reality, and it doesn’t make the problem any better.

We’d much rather work together with ethical, concerned members of funeral service who agree with us that ethical business practices should prevail in the industry, and who wish to rout the bad guys that give everyone else a bad name. If the worst elements of funeral service don’t reflect your business practices, why are you personally offended? Don’t you agree those elements should be exposed so honest businesspeople can separate themselves from scoundrels? You could do a lot more to help that cause by working with us than by snarking
at a consumer charity.

Joshua Slocum
Executive Director
Funeral Consumers Alliance
http://www.funerals.org
802-865-8300

Here’s my response:

To calculate the total salaries and benefits paid to employees and officers, I simply added the line items from their 2006 tax return.  Mr. Slocum claims that I overstated the amount by roughly $8000.  But then he reminds us that he only pays three employees, adding credence to my assertion that his group exists, at least partly, to collect enough money to pay his own salary.

Of course, you are correct, Mr. Slocum, that I missed the line that officers and directors are not paid.  Of course, as your title is “Executive Director,” how do you explain your own salary?  Maybe I just don’t understand what constitutes a “director.”

I could continue with the semantics (the first half of your response is just that) but my major problem with your organization contains two serious and substantive arguments:

1.  You seem to link “ethical” with “reasonably-priced” in your response (twice, in fact) and in the materials on your website, as if the two concepts must always go hand-in-hand.

However, the respected magazine Ethisphere ranked groups like BMW, American Express, Google, GE and Nike in their list of most ethical companies in the world.  How is it that a company that makes $80,000 luxury vehicles can be considered the most ethical car company in the world, if your thesis is to be accepted?  That’s not to mention $150 sneakers, Super Platinum Exclusive credit cards, the latest in jet engine technology or the high salaries paid television stars (G.E. owns NBC).

We live in a free society that embraces capitalism.  A funeral professional is welcome to charge any amount she chooses, so long as her community accepts it.  If the community disagrees, they choose a competitor or another disposition option, like cremation.

You’d like to see funeral directors offer lower prices (at their own financial peril) but do you also warn consumers not to pay too little?  Will you provide a guarantee to funeral directors that if they offer a lower price, you’ll discourage their clients from choosing a lower cost disposition option or going to a lower-priced competitor?

At what point is a businessperson (the funeral director) allowed to make a profit?

I get very defensive when anyone suggests that anyone “owes” them something, like lower prices for services rendered.  What if your members decide that your own price is too high?  Are you willing to give back a large portion of your salary, Mr. Slocum?

2.  Your own salary is paid by scare tactics.  You claim a membership of 400,000 but yet you pay the majority of your income to three people.  Then you work really hard to get scary, fear-filled headlines into the press. 

Newsweek’s online story could have been a positive discussion of the benefits of home funerals, but their discussion with you turned the article into another “big, bad funeral industry” expose, complete a few horror stories.  Even in your response to my comments, you mention only a “few hundred” funeral homes that your members have found that you consider ethical.  Then you claim that there are “deep problems” in the funeral industry without providing real examples.

Sir, nearly 2 million Americans die every year.  There are 20,000+ funeral homes serving those families.  If the problem is so widespread and people are being so mistreated, why are there not more news stories?  The local and national press loves a good sob story, hence the premise behind the Newsweek article.  If even 10% of all funerals were badly handled or the families horribly mistreated, there would be 200,000 stories each year and the FCA wouldn’t need to pay you to drum up fear.

Simply put, your claims ignore that consumers already control the industry.  When they choose a firm to handle their arrangements, they “vote” for that firm to exist.  Companies that abuse the public or charge outrageous prices don’t usually last.  The same is true for small-town funeral homes, which make up 90% of the industry.

Personally, I think it’s important for honest, trustworthy funeral directors (the vast, vast majority) to stand up for themselves and make sure the true story of funeral service is heard.

The article I wrote about Tributes.com, titled Serious Money is Coming to Online Obits. And Why it Won’t Work., has generated a lot of discussion lately.  I’d like to share my own thoughts on the words offered by several readers.

Dale Clock, of the Lifestory Network of funeral homes, shares:

…we open the paper and scan them over to see who died.  We aren’t looking for a specific name, we’re looking for a name we might know.  So how do you do that nationwide?  I don’t want to scan every death that happened yesterday.  I’d need to narrow the list down by location. And if the list is incomplete then it’s no good to me.  So unless they can get every paper and/or every funeral home on board it’s not an option for me.

Another reader, Jodi, notes:

Jeff Taylor is a brilliant and innovative individual,(I had the opportunity to visit with him personally) - in his niche. His niche is not funerals. Yes, he changed the face of how people look for a career, and even made what was the standard of job hunting obsolete. Funeral service is a different animal and his customer base…the funeral director / industry is not looking to add to their already high overhead, they are looking to lower it.

Yes - a national achieve would be great, but realistically, even if it was free, I doubt you would find funeral home owners participating.

Both Dale and Jodi run funeral homes on a daily basis.  In her comments, Jodi tells us that she tried to start a similar service when she worked for Lifefiles.com.  Her insight, as a funeral director and past Internet vendor, is unique.

Later, Respectance.com co-founder, Richard Derks, offered his perspective:

Your arguments are totally right from an industry point of view. But I for one, dare to claim that the industry is not always the best to know what their clients need. They might indeed be more concerned with their way of running a business, than with listening and researching the market.

In the end (!), some will embrace us, and these people and companies will be the leaders of tomorrow. Otherwise, there would never have been Starbucks, iPods and wii.

He also shares that I’ve gotten some information about his company wrong.  I researched and found that I misunderstood the venture capital press releases his company has sent to several online news aggregates.  Rather than adding $1.5 millon to their original capital of $250,000, they have merely gathered a TOTAL of $1.5 million to fund their company.  I’ve corrected it in the post.

On his own blog at Respectance.com, he presents his case in a post titled Finally, Embrace New Ideas:

Funeral Home Companies are deciding what people need, and how they will provide the services. They are intractable on this point. It’s all about the profit margin (and as a business person myself I understand profit), but without innovation this industry is being left behind.

There are memorial websites that charge $300-$500 to set up a tribute. Absolutely crazy. At Respectance people do it for free. They control their tributes and a simple Google search lets everyone find the tribute.

Tim points out that at heart we are still small town people. Now I will agree that we might feel like small town people, but most of us don’t live in a small town any more! Many don’t live where they grew up, some move several times as adults and establish friendships and acquaintances throughout the world. We don’t get the daily paper from each town we have friends in.

The premise that we like to peruse obits in the paper may be true, but we don’t get the papers anymore. In this big small world, we get our news instantaneously. Without emails from people I wouldn’t know whether someone had died half way around the world.

Remembering friends and loved ones with online memorials are the way the world is heading. The sooner the old guard in the Funerary Business tune in the farther ahead they will be.

After reading his words here, I knew I had to share an industry perspective with him.  Here’s the comment I left on his blog:

Thank you for your kind words on my blog.  I’m glad you can see the funeral industry’s side on this issue.  As usual, consumers will drive the online memorial market and will do a better job than funeral directors can.

But while you admonish directors for their unwillingness to embrace the global aspects of this issue, it’s important to remember that the funeral industry, at least the nuts-and-bolts part of preparing and burying/cremating the dead, is very much a local industry.  And the majority of funeral homes in this country still deal directly with customers who have known them for years and chosen them based upon a personal relationship.  For that reason, the industry is still very “small town” and will remain so for a long time.

Yes, there is a part of our future that includes living much of life online, but many smaller sized funeral homes are not even on the Internet (either having a website or even having high-speed access!) and don’t see a need for it.

In truth, sites like yours provide a very important service to those who have chosen to make the Internet a part of their everyday life:  you provide the opportunity to share the information and emotions of loss with others who are similarly connected to the Internet.

But your love of the Internet and the amount of time you spend on it cannot simply be transferred, like downloading an iTune, to someone who doesn’t “get it” yet.

There ARE still people who get the newspaper.  Even many Internet-savvy folks in my neighborhood get the digital version of their local paper and peruse the obituaries.

I think one of the biggest issues of Internet connectivity, at least for this industry, is keeping it local.  How do we use the Internet to augment our local connections?  How do we use our websites and online obituaries to connect, as funeral homes, to our community?

I still sense a tone of anger at capitalist funeral directors who expect to make a profit from their work.
Fortunately, I know that money paid for services represents the value a family sees in the time, effort and skill expended on their behalf.  On average, a funeral director spends several years in school and apprenticeship, only to emerge into a profession that pays less than $50,000 a year to work long hours (many, many 2 am trips to the hospital and countless more evenings spent at the funeral home for viewings after long days in the office) and miss major family events.

And if a funeral director is fortunate enough to build up savings and open her own firm, there’s even more responsibility and expenses before any real cash starts flowing.

The business model for a funeral home (and any service business, for that matter) requires a certain amount of work to be done for each dollar made.  Internet companies are able to attract large amounts of investment capital because webservices require a lot less management after an intensive initial setup.

The sad truth for new services like yours is that most funeral directors know how to do their job and they know what pays the bills.  They know that overhead stays the same no matter whether they provide 20 funerals a month or 2 a year.  Because there’s such a big risk involved in negatively affecting the stream of funerals coming in, most directors are slow to change their formulas for success.

Haranguing a funeral director for being “intractable” or warning them that they’ll be “left behind” does not help and will usually, at least among the “old guard” funeral directors I know, elicit a laugh and a dismissing wave of the hand.  After that, you get ignored.

I admire the service you provide for your clientele.  But relying upon funeral directors to spread the word about your service, when there’s no real return on the expenditure of their time, strikes me as foolhardy.

Keep up the good work.  Your service is necessary (evidenced by the number of people who already use it) and beautifully designed.

I certainly hope that Richard understands the angle from which I approach this issue.  I am speaking as a member of the industry, not as a consumer, when I protest the strong words he directs at funeral directors.  I doubt that he is expressing anything more malicious than frustation that the industry is so slow to react.  Unfortunately, Internet technologies have encouraged many businesspeople to expect an immediate response, since such a response is often the case.

But that instantaneous response is mostly driven by consumers, not industry.  Excoriating the funeral industry for sticking with what has worked for 100 years is a lot like banging your head against a brick wall:  they wall is not damaged and you’ve got nothing to show for it but a headache.

I think Respectance.com is a highly-effective consumer site.  Unfortunately, Tributes.com is trying to be an industry-driven site, where revenues are generated from funeral homes.  I wonder if Tributes.com will run their own obituary or if someone will have to set up a Respectance.com memorial for them?

Jodi Clock of the Clock Life Story Funeral Home, responds to my thoughts in the post, Discount Selling and Full-Service Don’t Mix, by saying:

In my opinion I do agree that AA doesn’t know what it wants to be, however I do agree that there is room in the airlines and even with AA for a discount brand or version.Major hotel chains have proven that model Marriott, Courtyard and Fairfield for example. It seems AA’s debacle isn’t brand confusion it’s a cash issue combined with consumer panic. AA are desperately re-acting to gas prices, lack of customers and their bottom line. Sound familiar? How many funeral homes do we see panic and re-act to the competitor,rather than stay on course?

Photo courtesy of Flickr User smenzel

Jodi has a point:  many companies have discount portions of their brand.  However, most have found it necessary to separate their discounted brand.

TED is the discount version of United.  Instead of separate compartments, they have separate fleets.

Courtyard by Marriott is a lower priced version of the famed hotel chain.  But Courtyard’s rooms aren’t housed in Marriott hotels; they’re in separate facilities.

Anderson-McQueen operates their lower-priced Cremation Tribute Center separate from their funeral homes. 

Except at super-mega-dealer properties, General Motors separates their Cadillac and Chevrolet dealerships to reduce confusion between their luxury and discount brands.

And almost every company that offers full-price services and discount versions also keeps their marketing efforts separate.

Ads touting the luxury of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel will neglect to mention the great prices at Hampton Inn, even though both are part of the Hilton family of brands.

When typing your needs into the carfinder at the Lexus website, you will not find a single Toyota or Scion in the search results, even though all three belong to the same megacorporation.

If American Airlines wants to continue appealing to full-price and discount buyers, they’ll need to separate their disparate business models.

It seems to me that the only reason to charge discount fliers more to check a bag is to further alienate them so they will stop buying your product.

Why not simply stop selling to them?

In this day and age, I can’timagine a business not having at minimum a website, let alone an interactive site that engages clients or potential customers.

At Clock Life Story Funeral Home, we believe in technology so strongly that outside of our several bricks and mortar operations, we have created a separate business where the entire value proposition is 100% online.

Families & friends now come to our primary website www.lifestorynet.com to share a thought or a memory.  They also are invited to visit www.eCrematory.com or the www.Todaycenter.com, which are both websites where consumers can (and do!) drive down the cost of their funeral through actively completing some of the functions they are legally able to complete (a self directed funeral, if you will).

Our website engages thousands of consumers daily and millions throughout the year.

In my opinion, funeral service as a whole has barely scratched the surface embracing technology.  We’re doing a dis-service to families.

In closing, I’ll quote Todd Van Beck and with his infamous Mr. Heefy stories, “nothing has changed the face funeral service since the replacement of the gravity based embalming machine!”, when he was referencing the introduction of www.LifeFiles.com, just one of the pioneering funeral technology companies.  We can not ignore technology!

In a recent post, titled Do Funeral Homes REALLY Need the Internet?, we mentioned the funeral blog of director Brian Hanner of Geib Funeral Homes in Ohio.  Brian read the story and agreed to share his thoughts with us.

He wrote:

Imagine the surprise I got while surfing through the Final Embrace blog to find… my blog referenced. (Gulp)

I thought that a little context would be helpful for those of you debating the “blog or website” topic.

I believe that every business needs a website. It is the modern phone directory for Americans of all ages who have a computer squarely plopped in their kitchen, or bedroom.

For consumers, selecting a funeral director is about relationships. I think for those in funeral service who want to be positioned online and in their community as a provider of responsive, knowledgeable and a nurturing brand of funeral service, that a blog is a perfect compliment to an existing website.

We know that much of the traffic generated on a funeral home’s website is destined for online memorials and obituaries. My hope was that the blog would capture the interest of visitors to the site.

Knowing as well that the visitor to our site has most likely come from another funeral home website, or newspaper obituary listing, that we have to make an excellent impression, or we will be toast in the mind of the consumer.

For the record, we receive about 460 unique visits to our website daily. The top destinations from our tracking software:

1: online obituaries

2: contact us (yes - it is the link in the
top left of the page for EASY/QUICK location)

3: blog

4: Why Choose Geib

5: What to do when death occurs

6: Employment with Geib (note that we are not always seeking applicants, but this does give shoppers another place to peek behind the curtain, and gain an understanding of the culture that we endeavor to maintain.

7: Geib Pet Crematory

8: Geib In Touch (Our community outreach and aftercare calendar of events)

While I can’t point to many additional calls that the blog has secured, it’s early… and like most advertising, will never be cited by consumers as the reason for choosing their funeral care provider.

The blog gets its highest traffic on Monday’s - when all of the working folks return to the office and catch up on the web surfing they didn’t care to do on their own personal time.

Content is posted on about any day that ends in a 2 or a 7 - to ensure a fresh topic with regularity.

Don’t expect readers to get involved on such a public blog. The questions I receive are often personal, and not the type of thing that writers would want to sign their name to on the internet.

Do expect to promote your site - and the blog as part of the site.

Finally, Remember thy audience. These are future/potential customers. It is not the space for blowing off steam, or compromising the integrity of funeral service. I usually resist the temptation to post on personal topics, but made an exception when my daughter was born in October… we reside in a small enough community that news of that nature is welcome - and humanizing. If you visit the blog, click on the “It’s a Girl” thread to see me in scrubs, holding a precious little gal, and beaming… Watch out Rob Heppell

Good Luck Future Bloggers!

You can access all the pages that Brian refers to in his letter by visiting the Geib Funeral Homes website.

Spencer commented on the post, Tim and Robin Discuss “Funeral Home Blogging”, and was gracious enough to answer my last question:  Do funeral homes REALLY need the Internet? 

First off, allow me to thank Tim for such a great blog, and for the opportunity to write this post.  I’m not a writer so please bear with me as I try to bring out some points that I believe are important.  I believe that Funeral Homes are just now starting to see the plus in getting a website.  My goal is to make it something that they find useful, something that helps their business.

Since this post is about Blogs and Web Site, let’s look at the meaning of both words:

Blog:   A frequently updated journal or diary—the first thing that pops into mind is: happenings in everyday life: such as….a funny thing happened today as I was driving down Elm St…….

Web Site:  A website collection of pages of text, images, and other files (such as audio) that make up a company online presence.

I would like to take a look first at what a website should be, or is, to a business.

Bill Gates once said: “There are two types of businesses in today’s world.  Those that are failing, and those that have an online presence”.

Your online site is much like a fingerprint—it marks you, and there are parts about each site that are different.  With blogs it is harder to customize it to fit YOU.  With ONE look when you first go to a site you can tell if they are using Blogging software, Front Page (or something close) or if they have a custom, professional website.   A website must FIT you.  If it doesn’t, you won’t have good success with it.

With the World-Wide-Web there has been unlimited possible ways for people to get their message out for others to see.  There is the younger age, “personal” way of blogging it, and there is the professional way of doing it through a traditional website.

Funeral Homes have always been a place of dignity, and a place where respect is given to the family that has lost a loved one.  That dignity must not be thrown out the window for the sake of keeping up with the 21st century or just to save some money.   A professional website speaks of care, and something that takes work, and maybe some money, to put together and keep up.  While a blog is, and can be a lot of work, in most cases it is free (or very low cost), and can’t be customized to where it can be like a fingerprint.

When visiting a business website most people are looking for something pertinent to that field. If you go to a Hotel Website, you are most likely looking for rates, and maybe photos of the rooms. If you go to a Funeral Home website most likely you are looking for an obit, or directions, or to learn more about the place you are interested in making your arrangements.  This is all much more possible, and easier with a website, than a blog.  You can control the inner workings with a website with ease, and you can make it work FOR you and not you for it.

With a website you have much, much more freedom to add, and work on your website to make it reflect YOU. Adding forms, photo galleries, download galleries, video files, email lists, guestbook, calendar, Shopping Cart, and audio files are much easier, and some of those might not even be possible with a blog.  Some blogging software doesn’t allow the owner to have Java script, or Flash.  This isn’t to be something you have to work around…this should be a tool that works for you.
 Since the first blog (I believe the first blog was started in 1997) there has been a place and a time for a person/company to have, and use a Blog.  

Blogs have been and always will be an important item in today’s online world, there is no denying that.  As of Dec. 2007 there was an estimated 112 million blogs.  But the traditional website still has the major role in the online world.  

I feel that in most cases a blog’s usefulness ends at the place of Professional Business.  As I think about it, a blog might be best suited for a Funeral Director.  The Funeral Director can update it with either pertinent information or everyday like facts.  If a link is placed on the Funeral Home website to that blog, that is up to the Funeral Home.   Maybe the best way to mix a blog and a website for a funeral home is the way Dale’s friends at geibfuneral.com do.  I must say I was impressed with the way the blog was integrated into the site.

In the last post by Tim, titled Do Funeral Homes REALLY Need the Internet?, he says:

Does this mean that funeral homes should run out and get the latest, greatest technology, just because the kids have it?  You can answer that for yourself (hint:  NO).

But it does mean that the day is quickly approaching when those 20 and 30 year olds will be deciding which funeral home to use for dad’s service or grandma’s memorial.  And they don’t pick up phone books anymore.

I agree!  The people you are serving today are the ones who use the internet to do their searching.  If you aren’t there….how do they find you? 

I guess my ending line would be: Your site should be YOU.  If YOU and your Funeral Home are more of a tech savvy, updated FH, then blog it baby!

As I type this my company is in the process of developing some new software that will help funeral homes with the issue of websites.  When it is completed I hope to send a sample to Tim and let him check it out and give us his thoughts.  I think he will be impressed with the ease of making, producing, and updating a website.