By Lauren Schwenker, Digital Sales Manager

When a family leaves your care, you want to know that you’ve served them well.

You likely wonder:

How would the family rate their experience with our staff? The building and equipment? The attention to detail?

How did they hear about our funeral home?

Would they recommend us to others?

One way funeral homes get these answers is by sending a brief survey for a family to complete during the funeral aftercare process. This feedback helps funeral professionals improve their service, marketing, current processes, and more. These responses are incredibly helpful.

But to start gathering feedback, you first need a funeral aftercare survey strategy that is cost-effective, saves you time, and is easy for families to do.

Here are 3 dos and don’ts to keep in mind.

Do: Try a blended approach to see what works best

When I say, “blended approach,” what I mean is try print and digital aftercare survey options to see what resonates with your families. The goal is to get survey results, which means you need to make sure your survey is straightforward, easy to fill out, and simple to submit. That can be achieved with either a print or digital option.

But there are pros and cons to both types of surveys.

Print surveys

These are paper questionnaires that arrive in the mail. They’re typically one-sided (sometimes double-sided) and vary in length, from 5-20 questions, depending on the type of feedback you want.

✅ Great for people who aren’t adept at technology

✅ Appear more personal, especially if you add a note or signature with the survey

❌ Cost more: You have to create, print, mail, and provide postage-paid envelope (costs more to resend)

❌ Cause more friction for the family (they have to fill it out and mail it back, which means you wait weeks for results)

❌ Ends up in the trash (can be seen as “junk” with other mail and not be open or read)

Print surveys are more of an expense to the funeral home than a digital survey, but they can be viewed as more personal.

Digital surveys

Similarly, sending digital surveys (via email or text) is a great addition to your funeral aftercare program. They can range from short to long and can contain different types of questions (open ended, ranking, true and false, etc.)

✅ Great if you want to receive instant feedback (get results in minutes, rather than days or weeks)

✅ Convenient for a family to fill out and submit instantly online (saves them time)

✅ Can update the survey with edits and publish them immediately (no need to reprint surveys with new questions/edits)

✅ Cost effective to send an email or text (and reminders to fill it out)

❌ Can be viewed as less personal

❌ Need a family’s permission to opt in to receiving emails and texts from your funeral home

These surveys cost less to produce and send. Plus, they’re convenient and timesaving for your funeral home and families. Also, they provide you with instant feedback to improve. But they run the risk of not being perceived as personal to families.

No matter what approach you decide, we recommend a blended approach. So, send that handwritten card, text them grief resources, and email them an aftercare survey. Reaching out in a variety of ways will ensure you’re communicating with them in a way they prefer.

Don’t: Overwhelm the family with too many tasks

I’ve seen funeral directors overwhelm families with too many requests at once, which caused the family to do nothing. Some of our customers (before working with our aftercare program) used to ask every family to complete a feedback survey, a Google review, and a referral card.

That’s too much to ask a grieving family to do.

If your goal is to improve the number of Google reviews, ask for a review. If it’s to get feedback to improve, send an aftercare survey for them to fill out. But don’t ask for more than one thing at a time. If the family responds quickly and positively, you can ask for multiple requests, but space them out.

Also, be sure you’re providing valuable resources (about grief and estate help) to them just as they are helping you.

Do: Use a funeral aftercare program to handle everything

Want a quick and easy way to get feedback from surveys without having to do any extra work? Sign up for a funeral aftercare program with this option built in!

For our clients, not only do we create the surveys, but we’ve tried and tested questions with families nationwide to know what works best.

We also provide families with helpful grief resources and information about settling an estate. And we have live text responders who check in with families about important dates, including birthdays and anniversaries. Learn how technology is changing aftercare for the better.

Plus, if you have questions, chances are our team can answer them. These include:

“What exactly do I write to respond to this Google review?” We have templates for that.

“How and when should I reach out to families?” We have a schedule for that.

“What valuable information should I share with families?” We have videos and articles for that.

“How should I market this in my community?” We have a program for that.

Our funeral aftercare program is the answer to your questions.

Get a demo today! 👇