How Funeral Homes Are Responding To The Covid-19 Pandemic

The past few weeks have been difficult for everyone. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to unfold, both businesses and day to day life have been disrupted.

With social distancing and quarantines put in place, life and business need to adapt. Funeral service has been hit hard by this. The situation has changed things and families now need greater options. While these are challenging times, funeral service is equipped with the tools needed to adapt. Check out our previous post to learn more about Funeral Home Tools For Serving Families During The Covid-19 Pandemic.

How Funeral Homes Are Responding

In the past week especially, our phone lines have been flooded with calls from clients and non clients. As everyone continues to receive updates and the latest news, we’ve spoken to many firms about how they’re managing this situation.

Technology has definitely been crucial for both communicating with families and continuing to serve. Firms have adapted and are using different technologies for online arrangements and online payments.

Many funeral homes have also increased their cleaning frequency, and installed special stations to help prevent a possible spread of the virus. Below are a few examples of different things funeral homes are doing to help their community and continue to serve.

Funeral Homes On Social Media

Families who have just lost someone have been hit especially hard. With more and more restrictions on the size of gatherings, funeral services need an alternate solution. Many firms, are now using webcasting tools to stream services online. Using tools like Facebook Live or SympathNet.com allow you to easily broadcast a service and share the link to the deceased’s online memorial page.

Free Facebook Page Setup & Facebook Live Training

Right now FrontRunner is doing our part to help funeral service adapt. ANY funeral home can visit our website to sign up for free Facebook page setup and training to use Facebook live. This is available free of charge as we want to help funeral homes continue to be able to serve families and help them say goodbye.

For more information, click here to read the press release, or click here to get started.

Website Pop-Ups & Notifications

FrontRunner clients with the Pulse Websystem can easily create pop-ups and notifications for their website. Right now, we’re encouraging firms to add a pop-up and let visitors know how their firm is responding. If you find you’re making frequent updates, we recommend creating a dedicated Covid-19 page. Once built, you can create a general pop-up to direct traffic there for the latest news.

Some firms have even created videos to attach to their website popups. Baker-Hazel & Snider Funeral Home has this video play when a visitor arrives to their site.

Dedicated Covid-19 Response Website Pages

As mentioned above, some firms are making dedicated pages on their website post updates. The Pulse Websystem’s drag and drop editing makes it easy to set a page like this up. A dedicated website page could include updates from your firm, tips for the community, and links to local resources.

Check out this page that O’Connell’s Family Funeral Home has on their website!

Preventing Spread At The Funeral Home

A funeral home is a community space. With people coming and going, keeping things cleaned and sanitized has never been more important. From little things like having extra hand sanitizer out to installing hand-washing stations; there’s several things you can do to keep your space clean and safe.

Below are some things different firms are doing to keep their facility clean and safe. This includes:

• Hourly cleaning checklists
• Additional signs around the facility
• Adding a handing washing stations for guests upon entry
• Special guest book signing stations.

Extra Ways To Support The Community

There is a lot of uncertainty ahead and funeral homes can do their part to support their communities. During times of difficulty like this, families turn to community leaders. During this pandemic, many funeral directors have answered that call.

Here are some different ways we’ve seen funeral homes reach out and support their community.

Thwaits-Zaumenter Funeral Home is one such firm that using Facebook Live to broadcast to the community. They’ve partnered with a local church to broadcast Sunday Mass to members of their community.

This firm has also promoted a text-help line for people in the area. The team at Thwaits-Zaumenter have offered services to go and pick necessities like food and home health items for members of their community who are unable to go out. With certain people in their area unable to travel, they’ve stepped up to help the community and found new ways to serve their neighbors.

In the Indianapolis area, Neal & Summers Funeral and Cremation Center, Costin Funeral Chapel, Light Memorial & Funeral Chapel, and Jones Family Mortuary have taken a collaborative approach their Covid-19 response.

The firms have all posted messages on their websites stating they’ve agreed to abide by mandates passed down by Indiana’s Governor to reduce gatherings to less than 10 people. The’ve also posted tips for their community to follow.

Some firms are even showing support for those outside their community in other other countries. Vescio Funeral Home has built a large tribute on their grounds to remember those who have passed away in Italy from Covid-19.

We Can Help, So We Will

If there’s anything we can do to help your firm during this time, please don’t hesitate to reach out. The FrontRunner team is always here always for you whether it is technology related or you just need some help and inspiration from what we’re seeing other funeral homes doing.

If you don’t currently have a Facebook page set up or want to get our step-by-step guide for using Facebook Live, click here to visit our website and let us know.

For any other unique business challenges, please visit our website to get in touch and see how we can help!