Do you have anybody in your funeral home that the families and the entire staff know they can always count on? Often, this individual turns out to be the funeral home manager. Many people rely on you, the manager, to devise solutions in tight time frames and difficult situations.
The best thing about working at funeral homes is knowing you’re appreciated and counted on in hard times. Serving families is one of the most rewarding things you can do.
While being the office manager of a funeral home can be a gratifying job, it requires a particular set of professional and personal traits.
Funeral homes should seek the following attributes in their office manager:
Excellent Customer Service Skills
The families you help go through a broad range of feelings and may have different ways of getting along. And since people working at funeral homes deal with all kinds of people, it’s critical to be an individual who can stay professional when providing an answering service for funeral homes.
Team-Focused Attitude
People working at a funeral home should be willing to work as a team. Planning and running a funeral or commemoration service takes a lot, so an office manager needs to be flexible and ready to help coworkers. Funeral directors may only get a few hours of sleep a night, so the office manager should understand how hard their jobs are and be open to assisting them.
Strong Administrative Abilities
Administrative skills are crucial in any office management role but are even more critical in a funeral home. Funeral homes count on business managers to handle phone calls, paperwork, and other daily business responsibilities.
Problem-Solving Skills
Since funeral homes serve different people, they will likely hear different ideas and special requests. Office managers must be open to “outside the norm” ideas and do everything they can to help family members condole their loved ones. These are the kinds of services that your clients’ families will remember and that will help your funeral home stand out.
Confident Using Technology
An office manager must be able to use the many kinds of technology necessary if they want to run a funeral home effectively. Funeral homes are increasingly using social media as a marketing strategy. This individual may play a significant part in ensuring that the funeral home has an active (and up-to-date) presence on the internet.
Dedicated
The grieving family members must be assured that your funeral home will simplify the process. You should handle each choice that families will face with the utmost care and attention. A vast list of services should be available, and your team should be able to explain how each one works. If an embalming process is used, the funeral may take up to two weeks.
Cremation might take a long time, depending on a variety of circumstances. Due to the unique circumstances of embalming and plastic preservation, anticipate delays in proceedings if the corpse was embalmed or prepared for preservation with acrylic plastic before death—with exact times depending on where you live. In addition, be aware that some families prefer urns that take longer to bury than others.
Dependable
When a family is making funeral preparations, there is a good chance that things may change. Therefore, funeral houses must be prepared to communicate with families on the spur of the moment and assist them in making the required alterations to their arrangements. They must be trustworthy and reliable and easy to get a hold of when you need them. Families should be able to contact funeral homes anytime, day or night, and funeral homes should make this possible.
Affordable
A funeral home doesn’t need to provide the most affordable funeral services in the area to be excellent; nonetheless, knowing how to choose a cremation service or a funeral service is essential.
However, they should be able to provide reasonable costs for families to stay within their means. So that they may pass the savings on to the people that depend on them, they should establish strong partnerships with firms that provide funeral materials.
Bottom Line
To be a good office manager at a funeral home, you must be empathetic, not sympathetic. A common misconception is that if you work at a funeral home, you have to mourn with the relatives of the deceased.
But families want help from a professional who can provide sensitive and quick service. When the office manager of a funeral home does a good job, the family will be glad that everything went well and that they didn’t have to worry about anything.