Five Mistakes to Watch Out for In A Funeral Home Website

By Azalea M. Lynn

Do you want to expand your horizons? How about marketing your funeral home business in the internet? With millions of people using the internet to look for products and services, this is the perfect time to make a website of your own. However, you should make sure that your website is designed properly. A poorly designed website can easily make a reader drag the mouse cursor to that X icon on the upper right corner of their screens.

Now, if you already have a website for your funeral home business, assess how it is doing. Are you getting enough traffic? Is there an improvement in sale conversions? If you feel like the results are not satisfactory, you should start making changes. Your website should be a place to get information about your services. Even though you have a funeral answering service provider to take calls the entire day, the accessibility of your website is highly beneficial.

Critical Mistakes to Prevent

Your funeral home website is not generating enough traffic. There might be mistakes in your website. Take a look at these mistakes and see what needs changing:

Quality of Inbound Links- Your funeral home website's inbound links are a factor for its credibility. And with Google, you really want to make your website credible. Quality inbound links will help your website become more searchable. The best inbound links to get are those related to your business like urn suppliers, casket suppliers, crematoriums or florists. They can link you from their website and you can link them in return.

URL- What online address do you have? Is it easy to remember? Be ready to spend extra cash to get the best website address for your funeral home business. This should be something easily remembered. If your funeral business' name is Pablo's Funeral home, the best address would be www.pablosfuneralhome.com. Do not pick a website address where the online consumer has to type several unknown words.

Poor Loading Time- Flash players and high quality images are great elements in a website design. They are eye-catching and very interesting. However, putting too much will result in poor loading time which can be very annoying for internet surfers. Also, keep your high quality elements to a minimum since these will not help boost your ranking in the search engine result page.

Right Content- Websites should have at least 2,500 words of content on the website. Even if you are running a small website, you should publish the right content. What is the point of putting up a funeral home website if you don't put the right information?

Bad Layout- Your funeral home website is live for a reason; it is to generate traffic and hopefully, convert the traffic to sales. You won't make any conversions if your visitors leave after a few seconds of exploring your site. The cause? It is probably your bad website layout.

After making some changes, make sure that your funeral answering service provider is reliable. Website servers can go down and errors might happen. To protect you from website server problems, assure customers that your phone lines are always open.

About the Author:

Azalea M. Lynn works in the funeral industry as a consultant. She recommends a funeral answering service for funeral directors looking to improve their bottom line. A funeral home answering service can help to reduce cost while improving customer experience.

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What are the 5 Benefits of Hiring Telephone Answering Services for Your Funeral Home Business?

By Azalea M. Lynn

How is your funeral home business going? If your business is good then it means that you are receiving phone calls left and right. Obviously, you are not running a call center and your employees are not customer service agents. Phone calls can be such a distraction from work which is why you need to hire telephone answering services to help your business become more efficient. Here are five benefits of telephone answering services to your funeral home business:

1. Offer High Level of Customer Service- With your business doing so well, you and your staff are constantly busy with other things. When your phone is ringing off the hook, you might feel the need to hurry the person off of the phone to get back to your other tasks. Obviously, this is bad for business. One of the benefits of telephone answering services is that you can offer a high level of customer service to all your customers. Customers should be able to talk to someone who is not in a hurry to get them off of the phone, just to get the details for making funeral arrangements.

2. Around-the-Clock Calls- Unless you have an all robot staff, you and your staff need rest too. You cannot work 24 hours a day anticipating phone calls at late at night or in the wee hours of the morning. Death is unpredictable. You are better off hiring answering services. Telephone answering services offering customer service 24/7. The customer support agents can handle calls anytime and forward the information to you.

3. No Missed Calls- For a business owner like you, it can be tough to get a good night's rest knowing that you might miss a phone call from a customer. If you hire a telephone answering service provider, you won't have to worry about this anymore. As mentioned, agents answer calls 24/7 so you can be rest-assured that you won't miss any sales opportunity even when you are sleeping.

4. No Customer Let Down- Your customers are valuable to your business. Without them, your business won't be growing like it is today. With this said, you need to prioritize their needs and wants. If your customers are having trouble getting through your phone lines, you will end up with frustrated customers. Return their efforts by answering their phone calls promptly. The telephone answering services you hired will make your customers feel more valuable.

5. Professional Agents- When you hire a professional telephone answering service, you can feel confident that they have professional agents to handle phone calls from your customers. Since you are in the funeral business, the agents should be trained in handling calls from people who just lost a loved one. Do not worry about this as agents will know how to get the needed information efficiently even through the hard times.

These five benefits of telephone answering services can really be a big help in your funeral home business. Do not look at this move as an added expense to your company. Rather, consider it as an investment to make your company grow more in the future.

About the Author:

Azalea M. Lynn works in the funeral industry as a consultant. She recommends a funeral answering service for funeral directors looking to improve their bottom line. A funeral answering service can help to reduce cost while improving customer experience.

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What are the Top Qualities of a Good Answering Service Agent?

By Azalea M. Lynn

Hiring an answering service company is a smart decision for your funeral home business. But, are you ready to start the selection process? Choosing one company to work with will be tough. These companies will try to get your business by making irresistible promises. You should know better than to believe them immediately.

The Right Answering Service Company

An answering service company's lifeblood is their customer service agents. It is the heart and soul of the company which means that clients should only expect the best agents to do the job. The main reason that businesses prefer to outsource answering services is to save money, time and effort. But placing customer's queries and request in the hands of the random customer service agents is risky. This is why you should do your homework in order to make the right decision when hiring an answering service company.

When choosing the right answering service company for your funeral home business, you should know about the company's background and experience. Find out how many employees they have and what accounts they handle. This will give you an idea if the company can handle your needs when it comes to answering phone calls from grieving customers

Things to Look for in a Customer Service Agent

Aside from knowing more about the company, what's most important is knowing about the competency and skills of the agents who will handle the calls. What are the three important qualities to look for in a good answering service agent?

1. Good Listening Skills- Let's face it, not every caller will be patient enough when asked to repeat their answers. In fact, many callers can get annoyed by this. You need an agent with good listening skills to get accurate information without asking the caller to repeat themselves. Bear in mind that your callers want to talk to someone who is listening to them and not just someone who wants to get off the line as soon as they can.

2. Knowledgeable- A good answering service agent should be knowledgeable about the company and their callers. The agent acts like a representative for the client's company in a sense. Callers can sense if an agent really knows what she is talking about and if she knows the steps to take. When an answering service agent is knowledgeable, her confidence will show. Customers prefer speaking to a confident agent rather than someone who doesn't know what she is doing. Give your callers peace of mind that their concerns will be attended to properly.

3. Is Always Composed- A good answering service agent should be composed at all times. He or she should answer calls with a calm demeanor. Usually, customers who call support hotlines have problems or complaints. These callers can be very frustrated and angry. In the case of funeral homes, callers might be grieving. Good answering service agents can empathize, sympathize and diffuse emotional callers.

To know if an agent has these important qualities, test her. Give her a call and pretend you are a grieving customer who is in a hurry to hang up the line. Check if the agent can accurately get information and how sympathetic the agent will be.

About the Author:

Azalea M. Lynn works in the funeral industry as a consultant. She recommends a answering service for funeral homes for funeral directors looking to improve their bottom line. A customer service for funeral homes can help to reduce cost while improving customer experience.

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The Top Three Reasons Why Outsourcing Answering Service for Funeral Homes is a Great Idea

By Azalea M. Lynn

Funeral Homes can be very busy places. Death is never predictable which means people could be calling your funeral home any time of the day. What if your business is already closed for the day? You won't be able to accept the call to help that family through a difficult time; and they will end up calling someone else. You don't want to pay your employees to work around the clock answering phone calls when they have other work they could be doing. You shouldn't lose sleep worrying about how many calls you might be missing.

Funeral homes have three options when it comes to answering phone calls: hire employees to answer calls, use automated answering service software or outsource to an answering service company. Your best option is to hire an outsourcing answering service. Here are three reasons why you should choose to outsource your calls to a professional answering service:

1. Human Connection- No customer would want a machine to be on the receiving end of the line. This is a challenging time for customers. The least you can provide them is a human connection. There is comfort when a real person answers their calls rather than a recorded voice on an answering machine. During this time, customers are very emotional and sensitive. If they feel like their requests will not be handled properly, they can easily look for another funeral home that will.

2. Trained Customer Service- Your specialty is running a funeral home; not answering the telephone. And with everything that you have to do for the families that you serve, you don't have time to train employees about proper phone etiquette and answering phone calls of the grieving. Answering service companies train their staff to handle many types of calls; including calls from people who have just experienced a loss. You can expect utmost professionalism and assured quality from the trained staff.

3. Better Focus- There is no doubt that outsourcing answering services can improve your focus on work. Needless to say, it will improve the focus of your employees too. Their time will be better spent on completing important tasks instead of answering phone calls during the day. In this competitive business, there is no room for distractions. You and your employees should maintain your focus and concentration at work.

Truly, outsourcing answering services offers convenience for your funeral home business. It gives you peace of mind that phone calls will still be answered even in the dead of the night. With a credible answering service company to help you, you know someone has your back when it comes to answering phone calls.

About the Author:

Azalea M. Lynn works in the funeral industry as a consultant. She recommends a customer service for funeral homes for funeral directors looking to improve their bottom line. A answering service for funeral homes can help to reduce cost while improving customer experience.

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The Benefits of a Live Operator Answering Service

Do you have an answering service for your company? If you are like most medium to large companies, then you probably have some sort of answering service in place. You might have a receptionist, but he or she is only able to answer so many calls per hour, and they only work so many hours per day. What happens if you have a high volume of incoming calls?

If you do not have someone on the phone ready to answer at all times, then you could be losing some business. If you have voicemail, you might think that you have all of your bases covered, but that is not the case. Most people do not want to leave a message on a voicemail service, and many people will simply hang up.

The Advantages of a Telephone Answering Service

They would rather not have their message get to you than to talk into a machine. Because so many people detest those old answering machines, today's business owner needs to find a way to have their phones answered 24-7, every day of the year. Your livelihood could depend on it.What are your options? You need to have a live operator answering service that will be able to take all of the calls that you or your receptionist are unable to handle.

You can find companies that offer these services, and you will be able to outsource your needs. The cost is well within the budgets of most businesses, and you will quickly find that it is well worth it. When you have a live operator answering your calls the customer's perception of you, and your company, changes.

How to Motivate Your Call Center Agents

Even if the operator has to take a message or give the customer the option of being forwarded to your personal voicemail, the customer will appreciate having spoken to a live person.What does this mean? It means that customers that did not want to leave voicemails before will be more inclined to do so now. You will have fewer hang up calls, and you will have happier customers.

It helps to improve the way that you communicate with your customers and clients, and they will enjoy having the knowledge that they will be able to reach someone no matter the time of day.This means they will not have to change their schedules to accommodate you. You will be able to experience a growth in your company because you will be better able to serve all of your customers.

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Hunt For the Right Call Center Agent

Call centres are in full gear to provide superior services and customer satisfaction. In order to achieve these goals, they have shifted their focus on their most important asset - agents. Also, they are trying to reduce the attrition rates by deploying and practicing employee friendly practices within the premises.

Call center outsourcing needs agents who could remain calm and confident even under pressure and possess good communication skills. Here are some tips on how you can explore your most precious treasure for your call centre:

1) Interviewing: Test your candidates on the base of their key potential and competencies. Make interview interactive and let the candidate speak. You will be able to judge his communication skills, confidence and calmness level as well. Ask them about issues, challenges and goals they have handled.

2) Recruit Big: Never hire or go for one agent. Try to hire them in small groups. This way it will be easy to manage and train them. Five is an ideal number in this case.

3) Honest still rules: Communicate clearly with candidates. Be transparent about the objectives of the company, working environment they will be working in and pressure they will be dealing with. This will help them to decide about the job offer which will eventually reduce the attrition rate in your call center because they would not abscond in half way then.

4) Invest in the induction stage: Try to open up with agents at the induction time itself. Let them feel comfortable about your organization and be in sync with its working culture.

5) Add external recruitment consultants: Make your external recruitment company, your long term solution provider because in that case, they will be in a position to understand your business better.

6) Budget: In a minimal budget, you can coordinate with local press to drive your PR campaign or job classified.

7) Multi-Channel Approach: Try social networking and social marketing sites to post your job requirement.

An applicant agent should also understands that are about providing excellent customer support and boost the services of client whereas a management should also understand that there is no such fixed criterion to find a good agent. Atmosphere of call center should be work compliant to hold their agents.

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