Heritage Coach Dealer Blog USA

The funeral industry has been struggling for some time now. There are a number of different reasons for this. One of the main reasons is the increase in cremations. Whatever the reason, many funeral directors are left wondering how they can drive new sales for their funeral homes. The answer might be found in using new technologies.

The advancement of the Internet has led to the creation of thousands of new tools that small businesses can leverage. The best part for funeral directors is that along with the increase in new tools, costs for using those tools have been decreasing at a similar rate. By leveraging certain technologies and getting creative, funeral directors can find ways to drive new revenue streams for their funeral homes, while their competitors are left trying to do the same old thing.

Video Services could be a huge growth opportunity for funeral directors. Funeral directors can create a new service whereby families pay to have live video feeds coming from their viewing. This allows friends and family who live out of town to participate in the funeral. Webcams can be setup throughout the funeral home, along with computer monitors. This will allows friends and family to log on from the comfort of their own homes, watch the viewing, and even video chat with other friends and family who are attending the viewing. Technologies like Oovoo and Skype can be leveraged for this new video service. Guess what? Both of these video chat software tools are absolutely free.

There are even new Startups being born around video services for funeral homes. Online-Funeral is one of those Startups. For a service fee, you can outsource this new service to Online-Funerals and they will take care of everything for you. With that said, it may be that many funeral directors will want to set this up themselves as it’s really not too complicated. If anything, you can bring in a technology/video expert to help install your webcams and computer monitors with either Skype or Oovoo. Either way, by leveraging technology and thinking creatively about your funeral home business, funeral directors can create new revenue streams. For those funeral directors who maintain the status quo, the numbers do not look to be in your favor. Take advantage of the tools that are out there and you’ll be very happy with the results.

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Recently, an autistic boy in Sydney, N.S. died in a snowstorm after following his dog Chance into the woods. Search teams weren’t able to find him until it was too late, but Chance stayed faithfully by the boy’s side, trying to keep him warm in a futile fight against a snowstorm and the hypothermia that eventually set in.

At the funeral procession, among the hearses and funeral cars that traveled to the memorial, there was one whose passenger had four legs, a tail, and mournful eyes that seemed entirely in keeping with the tone of the day. Dogs have been known to lie on their master’s graves and return time and again to keep them company – but how many have actually attended the procession?

It’s a touching thought that when a community gathers together in mourning for a little boy who could not even cry out for help due to his autism, an allowance could be made for the pet who was so faithful to his master, and who tried to save him. Many funeral homes might not have allowed Chance to ride in the hearse, but they recognized that he had an important role in this little boy’s life and deserved to be a part of the memorial too.

Anyone who has ever driven funeral cars or hearses has surely had rules and regulations to follow about what is and is not acceptable within the bounds of the car. Some of those rules are simply practical, such as not eating food in the car because it might leave crumbs. Others might be more for the sake of the solemnity of the car’s task, such as not honking the horn because such a loud noise might feel disrespectful to the mourners.

Though I haven’t personally asked all the funeral car drivers out there, I’m sure many of them have rules about pets in their vehicles. I’m equally sure that almost all of them would say that they would make an exception for a situation such as this one, and a dog such as Chance. Particularly when your industry is a realm all about compassion and respect, it seems almost essential that sometimes funeral cars must give way to human emotions.

So here’s a question from us at Heritage Coach for all of you out there: when is it appropriate to make exceptions to rules regarding hearses and funeral cars out of consideration for the family and for the deceased? What circumstances would you make an exception for? And when would you say that funeral cars deserve respect too, and that certain rules need to be obeyed to make sure they stay that way?

We’d love to hear your stories about any times when funeral cars have made exceptions or chosen not to.

Funeral homes across the country are adding video equipment to their facilities in an effort to give family members overseas a chance to say goodbye. One funeral home owner in the Twin Tiers region – Brad Perkins – is joining the trend.

Perkins, owner of the Dryden area Perkins Funeral Home, recently invested in some state-of-the-art video equipment to allow family members overseas to view the funeral of a loved one. During the holiday season, Perkins is offering this service for free for military families. Perkins is the son of a WWII soldier so he knows the comfort of instant communication during the most tragic events in a family’s life. That’s not something he had growing up because communication with soldiers overseas took so long.

“To realize that those messages took 10 days to two months to arrive, now we can do something that’s virtually live, that’s right away. We can record a message today, and it can be seen 40 seconds later in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he explained.

Is your funeral home equipped with video equipment to serve those family members who cannot make it to the funeral services? If not, you may be missing out!

Mock funerals tend to be the way to get attention and make your cause known these days. The students at UNC-Asheville recognize this and used a mock funeral to bring awareness to the cancelled EARN scholarship for students at the school.

The Students for a Democratic Society held the demonstration earlier this month as part of a “national day of action for education rights” that was initiated by the Network to Fight for Economic Justice, a new group on campus. During the demonstration, pallbearers carried fake caskets to the “quad” while making stops along the way. At the end of the journey, there was a tombstone which remained there for the rest of the week to commemorate the end of the EARN scholarship’s availability for UNCA students because it was “struck down by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.”

More than 10,000 students in the state received the EARN scholarship to attend college. It was designed to help lower-income students and families afford the high cost of going to school. However, the scholarship was cut at the state level because of budget shortfalls, which the Students for a Democratic Society do not agree with because many of the top administrators are still bringing in more than $100,000 per year.

If you have attended several military funerals in recent months, you may have noticed a couple of them playing “Taps” over a tape recorder. That just does not have the same effect as hearing it live, but a shortage of bugle players have made the taped version a necessity for families who want to hear it at the ceremony.

In Long Island, New York, Louis DiLeo is the only bugle player available in the southern region of NY’s Military Forces Honor Guard to play the touching notes at services for fallen military personnel. Due to the shortage, he is keeping quite busy traveling to various funerals in the area to give families their desire to hear “Taps” played live on a bugle. According to DiLeo, he started doing this more than three years ago and he has not missed a day during that time.

Are you a bugler who is able to travel around your area and provide this last tribute to fallen soldiers? If so, please contact your local VFW office or military reserve to let them know. It’s a great way to spend your time while lightening the load for the few buglers who are left.

If you have ever been to a traditional funeral, you have probably noticed hymns playing in the background or someone may have even sung a hymn during the actual service. Hymns are very popular at funerals, but do you know why?

Music has an uncanny way of expressing how we feel when we are dealing with grief. By expressing our feelings, certain songs tend to be soothing and comforting when we are feeling at our lowest. In addition to that, hymns tend to be familiar to people, even those who rarely step foot inside a church.

But more pop songs are being used at funerals these days in place of hymns or even in addition to hymns. Here are some of the most popular songs played at funerals:

Wind Beneath My Wings – Better Midler
Candle in the Wind – Elton John
How Great Thou Art
It Is Well With My Soul
Tears in Heaven – Eric Clapton
Amazing Grace
Rock of Ages
Go Rest High on that Mountain – Ricky Skaggs
…and several others.

Do you see a song on this list that you would want played at your funeral? What song would you like played or sung at your funeral?

One of the major problems that funeral directors and grieving families have had to deal with in recent years is the group of people from a “church” in Kansas that protest at funerals. For months, they have been showing up at funerals for soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice and others who have been in the service of this country in some form or another. They protest because they say those people are dying because God hates America.

A recent court case brought the church to trial, however, saying that their speech was not protected under the First Amendment as it constituted “hate speech.” After losing the case, a federal appeals court overturned the decision, saying the church has a right to protest regardless of how unpopular their message is.

“Our speech, on our signs and our Web sites, is public speech,” explains Margie Jean Phelps, the daughter of Reverend Fred W. Phelps, Sr., the pastor of the Westboro Kansas Church. “It’s not on private matters. It’s on public issues, so it’s protected.”

For now, it seems like funeral cars and mourners are going to have to dodge these protestors. They do have the right to speak their mind in the United States, even if it is a despicable message.

In a time when layoffs are imminent and people are worried about where their next paycheck is coming from, the funeral services industry seems to be a secure place to work. That’s exactly what Alan Willoughby thought when he struggled to make ends meet from his job at the used car lot.

Even though he was 50 years old, Willoughby decided to go back to college to study the science and business of death. He isn’t alone, either. There has been a surge of students interested in this field in recent years as more people are looking for a field that will always be needed in the community.

The salaries for funeral directors are not particularly lucrative, but they are secure and decent. According to the latest estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, funeral directors made an average of nearly $60,000. Even if that’s a cut in pay for some people, the security of the industry makes up for it.

The surge in interest in the funeral industry is nothing new, though. This seems to happen every time there is a financial dip. According to Stephanie Kann, the program director at Worsham College’s Mortuary Science program in Illinois, interest in this field historically spikes when the unemployment rate hits eight percent. There was a 20 percent increase this year over last year. Will there be an even larger surge if the unemployment rate doesn’t get better? We’ll have to wait and see.

Over the past several months, it seems like funeral homes have been getting more and more bad press. There was, of course, the funeral home that is reported to have cremated bodies that were supposed to be buried, in order to save expenses, and there have been many other incidents in recent days.

For example, there is the Boston funeral home that is accused of reselling caskets. The funeral manager is reported to have removed a woman’s body from her casket at the grave site, and then removed the casket and sold it to another person.

In South Carolina, there is a story that is even more disturbing. There, funeral home personnel are accused of actually cutting the legs off of one of the deceased in order to fit the six foot seven inch man into a casket.

In times like these, it is important to remember just how important a reputation of integrity and honest is for a funeral director. The vast majority of funeral directors don’t engage in these horrific practices, and it is unfortunate when one bad apple brings such a cloud of disrepute on an entire industry.

Honesty, transparency and integrity are essential qualities of any successful funeral home or funeral director.

There is no denying the impact that Michael Jackson had on the world of music, and one funeral home in Pittsburgh has even hosted an event dedicated to the “king of pop.”

On Thursday, July 2, the Coston Funeral Home in East Liberty held a memorial service for Michael Jackson. Fans of the star arrived in droves, singing, dancing, and shedding tears.

The event, according to many in attendance, helped to comfort guests as they mourn the loss of this icon. While Michael Jackson may be gone, his music and his memory will live on in the hearts and minds of his fans.

The funeral home will hold a second memorial tribute for Michael Jackson on July 10, 2009.