L to R: Barbara Stewart, Susan Broersma and Tom Antram with FRENCH and Gail Rubin
Here in Albuquerque, FRENCH Funerals-Cremations leads the way in ground-breaking improvements in the funeral business. When you add in their involvement with Passare, their pioneering influence extends far beyond New Mexico.
Using Passare’s online Collaboration Center, FRENCH’s funeral directors have been able to significantly shrink the amount of time families spend on planning at the funeral home and reduce the stress level for families who prefer to make arrangements over the Internet.
Full disclosure: In another pioneering move, FRENCH helped me to bring funeral planning conversations into people’s living rooms by sponsoring the creation of my television interview series A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die.
FRENCH is an early adopter of the End-of-Life Management Platform offered by Passare. This may be a bit of “inside baseball” about the funeral business, but you may be interested in this press release from Passare about the results FRENCH’s is generating as a result of their embrace of this revolutionary approach to helping families plan funerals.
French Funerals and Cremations Report Significant Business Benefits From Passare’s End-of-Life Management Platform
New Mexico’s Largest Independent Funeral Home Focuses on Family Relationships, Builds Solid Foundation for Growth With Passare
SAN FRANCISCO, CA December 2, 2014 Passare, Inc., a trusted and relevant source for End-of-Life planning and management, today announced that French Funerals and Cremations has reported improved business benefits from using the company’s End-of-Life Management Platform. With Passare, the independent funeral home has been able to enhance the quality of its relationships with families, as well as build a better base for future growth.
Founded in 1907, French Funerals and Cremations is New Mexico’s largest and oldest family-owned funeral home, serving approximately 2,000 families annually through five locations. The funeral home was one of the earliest adopters of Passare’s innovative solution-providing insights that have been instrumental in refining and driving product development.
According to feedback from French’s funeral directors, the most noticeable benefits have stemmed from Passare’s Collaboration Center, which offers families the option of entering information — online at their own convenience — in advance of the initial meeting with the funeral home. With the Collaboration Center, French and the families it serves are able to shrink meeting times in many cases by an average of 30-45 minutes — and in other cases more for families who are comfortable interacting via the Internet. This higher productivity has translated into a less stressful experience for the families they serve.
More importantly, the Collaboration Center has transformed the nature of these meetings for both parties. With the ability to engage the process on their own time, families gain a greater sense of control and often have a clearer picture of the services they envision. Funeral directors — who can simultaneously preview a family’s preliminary data and preferences — are able to gain a stronger sense of specific needs and adopt a more consultative role. As families use the Collaboration Center, French is able to help them more fully explore ranges of personalization, which is consistent with their mission to help “create funerals as unique as a loved one’s life lived.”
“Since the beginning, our profession has relied on a more traditional process of having families come into our locations to engage our processes and the range of options,” explained D.F. “Duffy” Swan, chairman and part owner of French Funerals and Cremations. “With Passare, we’re able to offer a new approach that fosters an even better environment of openness that helps reduce the more traditional sense of guarded apprehension. This, in turn, translates into a better and more productive relationship with our families.”
According to Swan, Passare also provides French with a strong foundation for differentiating and growing its business. For example, he expects Passare’s rich online capabilities to help them serve families with pre-need contracts going forward. Swan also anticipates that the more robust online capability, in time, will allow the company greater geographic reach without having to construct facilities in other locations.
“I think there’s a mis-perception that technology is all about automation and therefore is somehow de-personalizing,” said Swan. “In fact, we’ve found the opposite to be true. Passare’s solution enables us to deepen our relationships with families by collaborating online and granting them more control.”
About Passare:
Passare, Inc. is the industry’s first and most comprehensive End-of-Life management platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the privately held company leverages technology to transform both the way funeral homes will operate in the 21st century and the service experience for families. Passare eases the emotional, financial, and logistical burden by guiding families through one of life’s most important passages with greater simplicity and peace of mind. For more information, please visit www.passare.com.
About French Funerals and Cremations:
French Funerals and Cremations is New Mexico’s largest and oldest family-owned funeral service company. Founded by Chester T. French in 1907, the French Family of Companies has served our communities for more than a century with a tradition of integrity and dedication to service excellence. One of the few remaining locally-owned and operated funeral and cremation businesses in New Mexico, we help families discover funerals as unique as the life lived through our five locations across Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. For more information, please visit: www.frenchfunerals.com.