COVID-19 has Transformed Customer Attitudes in North America

The pandemic has brought about fundamental changes in consumer attitudes in the past year. But how do these changes affect how the Death Care Sector interacts with its customers?

OpusXenta and The Foresight Companies joined together to offer the webinar, “COVID-19 has Transformed Customer Attitudes: How Can the Death Care Profession Adjust?”. Chris Cruger from the Foresight Companies talks about their 2021 Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior Study and how it impacts the profession.

Chris Cruger, The Foresight Companies

The Foresight Companies is a business and financial consulting firm that provides solution-based services that guide their clients through the process of strategic change. Their track record demonstrates that they convert business analytics into business success. They provide both insight and foresight on strategies to improve their clients’ profitability, grow their business and ensure a brighter future.

With over 20 years experience, Chris Cruger is seen as an innovator and thought leader in the funeral and cemetery industry. His great success is based on his exceptional ability to provide comprehensive solutions to intricate business challenges that leaders in our industry are faced with. Since joining Foresight, he has demonstrated his passion and ability to help clients and implemented some key initiatives to further expand the company.

Douglas Farrow, OpusXenta

Douglas Farrow
Hello, everyone. We’re going to wait just a couple of minutes while everybody logs in. We’ll begin our webinar in just a few minutes.

Good morning or afternoon, depending on your your time zone. Welcome to another in our series of webinars, today’s is especially topical; How COVID-19 has Transformed Customer Attitudes. We appreciate you taking your time out of your busy schedules to join us. My name is Doug Farrow with OpusXenta, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s webinar.

Douglas Farrow
Before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping things: One, to eliminate background noise, we’ve actually muted everyone. You’ll only be able to hear the presenter speak. There will be a time for questions and answers after. Feel free at any time to put your questions into the chat feature on your dashboard. At the end of the program, we’ll actually be taking questions. I apologize in advance due to the limited amount of time we may not get to everybody’s, but we promise that everyone’s will get answered one way or another. Well, lastly, we’ll also be recording today’s webinar.

Douglas Farrow
It’ll be available on our website and our company resources, but we’ll also be sending a copy to everyone with presentation slides. Today is my distinct pleasure to be able to introduce Chris Cruger. Chris, in his 20 years in the profession, has proven to be an innovator and thought leader. The Foresight Companies have demonstrated an ability to convert business analytics into business success. So with that, I’m just going to turn it over to Chris. Good morning, Chris.

Chris Cruger
Morning, Doug. Thanks very much. Let me move us along here and get us to our first slide here. First of all, I’d like to thank Tony, Doug, and Rob for the opportunity to talk to you all today, the entire OpusXenta team. I had the opportunity to visit with everybody back in Nashville last week at the NFDA and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these folks real well. And I’m really excited about the opportunity to present a little bit about a study that we completed. It’s the second of our studies that we’ve completed.

Chris Cruger
The title of my presentation today is COVID-19 Has Transformed Customer Attitudes: How can the Death Care Profession Adjust? The first thing I’d like to do is take a little bit of a look in the rearview mirror. The first thing we’ll do is look at 2020, really the pandemic and review. Then I’ll move on and talk a little bit about our findings from the study that we completed this year, our 2021 Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior Study. After we go through those findings, I’ll take a moment and talk a little bit about what does this mean for the profession? How is this going to impact each and every one of us in what we do day in and day out?

Chris Cruger
So first, looking at this slide here, I ask you, what is the one thing that each of these companies have in common? Now, for me, growing up, Blockbuster was a part of every Friday and Saturday night. Polaroid was effectively a picture, when I was going to take a picture, I took a Polaroid, kind of like a Xerox. Toys R Us, Borders. Well, one of the things that each of these have in common is that they failed to innovate. And the other thing that they all have in common is that they no longer exist. In one way shape or form or another, these businesses have all gone out of business, whether it be through liquidation, bankruptcy, mergers or whatever the case may be. You look at something like our friend here, Blockbuster, way back when they were approached by a little known company by the name of Netflix, they declined. They went into liquidation shortly thereafter. I mentioned Polaroid same thing. They didn’t think there was much to this digital image concept. Toys R Us originally had a deal with Amazon. There was a breach of contract, they failed to innovate, same thing. Ultimately, they failed to exist. My point in pointing out each of these is to show you that failure to innovate can have catastrophic impact. A little known fact is, if you go back to 1955, so 66 years ago, the Fortune 500, so the 500 largest companies in the United States, of the 500 largest companies in the United States 66 years ago, only 60 of those exist today. It’s kind of scary when you think about these big, large corporations and names that were household names, at least for me growing up, that they no longer exist. And the point is, it’s because they failed to see what was coming. And one of the things that we’re going to talk about today is what is coming to our profession today. And what are some of the steps that we can take to address those.

Chris Cruger
Now similar to the slide before what do these companies all have in common? These are all innovators in the space. You look at Southwest, counterpoint to one of the companies on the slide before, Pan Am. Pan Am used to be the darling of the skies. Southwest came in, they had a low cost model, great company culture, and they have thrived. Amazon, I’m going to talk about Amazon, or I’m at least going to bring it up several times throughout this presentation because it’s a common theme. We have gravitated to a society where we’re a convenience society. We can get just about anything today from the comfort of our own couch. It’s the Amazon effect on everything that we do, and it’s permeating funeral service. So it is absolutely part of what we’re doing right now, and I want you to remember that as we go through this presentation today.

Chris Cruger
So first thing I want to talk about is our study. This is the second such study that we have completed. The first study that we completed was back in the end of March, early April, of last year. So if you can put yourself back in time a little bit, when that whole concept of shelter in place, this pandemic, all of these things were affecting us, and it was a brand new concept for all of us. We embarked on a consumer behavior study. So the first thing that we wanted to do is understand what was the consumer thinking about death care. So we asked the consumer about three particular times. This is back in time, so it was pre, during, and post COVID. Now fast forward twelve months to April of this year and we did the study again. Now we took from what we initially started with 2500 respondents. We increased that to almost 4147 respondents. We increased that number in such a way because we wanted to dive deeper into certain demographics and certain Geographics. Now we required people to be over the age of 45, have a household income in excess of $70,000, and what that did is it allowed us to have a 95% degree of accuracy in all of the information that I’m going to share with you today, plus or minus 2%. So all of the statistics that I’m going to talk about today, the findings from our study are accurate to 95% degree of confidence plus or minus 2%. So first, that little look in the rear view mirror.

Chris Cruger
So what did we learn in 2020? Probably first and foremost, what has historically been a retail, more face to face interaction of the funeral director and the sales counselor shifted. And it had to shift, frankly, to a much more of a virtual interaction, a consultative approach, and it was a totally different way of doing things. Also, emerging throughout the entire process of 2020, certainly those who did it well and frankly, even those who didn’t, is technology is permeating every facet of the business model today, whether it be from your marketing to your aftercare. Every facet of now includes technology in one way, shape or another. And then also, one of the big shifts that we’ve seen is consumer attitudes have changed. They’ve evolved quite considerably. The consumer is looking for transparency (we’ll talk a little bit more about that), they’re looking for convenience, and there’s also a propensity to pre-plan more so today than at any other point in history. Now, not only are consumer attitudes changing in our profession, but each and every one of us has to acknowledge the fact that our attitudes have changed about just about everything that we do.

And whether it’s a bit of an unpopular topic at times, but there have been winners and losers. When I look at our profession, I think that there’s probably that one third, which is fairly representative of society today, one third of the profession has been incredibly successful, making money hand over fist, market share has increased, call volume has increased, sales have increased, and for the most part, these are the organizations that really pivoted and adapted their way of doing things. Probably well positioned with technology leading into the pandemic. In the middle, we have another third of the population who are doing just fine, actually, probably doing quite well. They adapted, they pivoted, they changed their operating model and they’re doing quite well. But over here, unfortunately, we have one third of our population or one third of the businesses out there right now that failed to adapt, failed to change, failed to embrace technology for one reason or another, whether they shut their doors, they had staffing issues, they didn’t embrace the technology. Unfortunately, these people over here have kind of been left behind. Now, because of the stimulus, the EIDL, the PPP1, PPP2, there’s been a lot of help from the government propping up businesses along the way. So this group of properties over here right now are looking at their bank account and saying things really aren’t that bad. Well, unfortunately, the reality of it is they are. These people over here have lost market share, have lost their sales, and have lost people, frankly, disproportionately today to the top performers like never before. So unfortunately, one of the by-products of this is there has been a shift in market share and a shift in the power dynamic, and there has ultimately resulted in quite a few operators out there who are struggling. 28% of all consumer attitudes and loyalties have changed as a result of the pandemic. So think about that. Three out of ten, almost three out of ten people have changed their loyalties, whether you’re talking Budweiser to Coors, Ford to Chevy or anything, Coke to Pepsi. Consumer loyalties have changed as a result of this pandemic. We have all experienced different ways of doing things, and it has changed the way that we must interface with our consumers.

Chris Cruger
Now, one of the things when I think about our profession, I ask you the question, or at least to contemplate: Do you think attitudes have changed more about our profession, about death and dying and who they’re going to use and as a funeral home or cemetery, higher or lower than the general attitudes of their daily lives? I’ll get to that in a second. But one of the things that I often hear and I’ve been hearing it for 25 plus years is, not my families. Well, my families will do this, my families will do that. The one thing I want you to think about is our families are changing and everything that we do in our daily lives is different today than it was certainly 24 months ago.

Chris Cruger
Now, here’s another study by the University of Pennsylvania, and this shows the behaviors that are driving customers away. First and foremost, physical plant store atmosphere. If your facilities aren’t up to standard, the grounds aren’t kept up, you’re driving people away. No great surprise to anybody in this profession that’s been around for a little while. That is very off putting, and it drives people away. But number two and I want you to focus on this because I’m going to come back to it. The second reason that drives consumers away the most is your website is difficult to navigate. Number two: Website is difficult to navigate, okay? Now moving on, didn’t appreciate my business, too messy, didn’t treat me with respect, didn’t listen. All of these things are the customer experience. If we’re not using our two years and instead using our mouth too often, we’re not listening to the consumer and we’re not giving them the experience that they’re asking for. These are the kind of behaviors that are off putting to the consumer today. Now, a couple of slides ago, I mentioned that 28% of consumers have changed their attitudes as a result of the pandemic. In death and dying, in the funeral and cemetery profession, that number is 32%. So consumers have changed their loyalties, their brand loyalties at a rate of 32% as a result of the pandemic.

Chris Cruger
Now, when you look at this slide here, you’ll see all the way to the right, you’ve got the 75 plus population, probably the population that many of us see as our primary audience. Well, here’s the scary thing. Twelve months ago, that number right there in 75 plus that’s now 21% was 12%. That number has increased 75% over the last twelve months. So that 75 and older population is experiencing a new way of doing things more so now than ever, and they are changing the way that they interact and the way they think about what they do. And that is our reality going forward.

Now, without further ado, I’m going to get into some of our key findings from the study. So first and foremost, before I get into this, I do want to point out again, I said this earlier, but these are statistics. These are facts. These are not my opinions. These are facts that have come from the study that we’ve conducted nationwide. So first and foremost, how many of you had what you thought was a high class problem? You had to turn business away for one reason or another. Champagne problems right? Here’s the bad news. 20% of those, if you’re a funeral home, if you had to turn somebody away, 18% of those consumers say they’re never coming back. So for one reason or another, you had to turn a family away and the unfortunate reality is they’re telling us right now they’re not going to come back to you. On the cemetery side if for one reason or another again, high cost problem, you just simply couldn’t bury somebody in a timely manner. Those families are telling us 30%, 29% of those families are saying they’re never coming back. Now, I would suggest to you that just as easy as it was to lose those families, it’s just as easy to win them back by simply taking the time listening to what the consumer wants and meeting those needs going forward. So don’t let this be disheartening. Ultimately, what you want this to do is figure out how do we win these people back and that is by simply listening to what the consumer is asking for and serving them that way.

Chris Cruger
Now, this is a fairly alarming slide. Consumers do not believe that we’re able to meet their needs nor their budget. So I’m less concerned about the budget here, but more on the needs and I want you to focus on the arrows on each of these labels here. All of the labels are pointing down. So when you look at this question twelve months ago to where we are today, the consumer is saying that we’re not listening to what they want. We’re not meeting their needs. We’re also not meeting their budget. We’re doing so less today than we were twelve months ago. And that’s the thing that we need to be cautious of, because ultimately, the consumers are telling us what they want. Yet we seem to be going in the opposite direction as a whole or at least as a profession. Now, here’s the good news. 63% of all families believe that it is important to have a big celebration, whether it be as a result of a funeral, part of the memorialization process. But the scary thing is 49% don’t want to have us involved with it. They don’t want the funeral home or the cemetery involved. So over half of the population is saying before they even walk in our door, they know they’re going to do something, they’re going to do something substantial, but they don’t want us involved. Now, here’s one of the things when we think about our business model, it comes down to do we want to fight this trend? Do we want to try to fight the current here, or do we want to participate in it? And one of the things that we have to think about, if this is where the consumer is headed, how are we going to adapt our models to meet the consumer’s needs?

Chris Cruger
43% of all consumers said they experienced the death of a friend or a loved one. So four in ten, almost half of the population in one way shape or form, experienced the death of a friend or a loved one. 75% of those consumers say they didn’t get to say goodbye. 66% didn’t get to see their loved one. So this speaks to a considerable amount of pent up grief. There’s a lot of emotions involved here, and a lot of people who are desperately have unresolved issues. So this opens the door to how do we reach out to these people? What are the different ways that we’re able to connect with these people? Because these people, they’re out there and they’re looking for some engagement. 75% said they didn’t get to say goodbye. 66% didn’t get to see their loved one. These are people that have unresolved issues and are in desperate need of after-care.

Chris Cruger
Now, one of the things about our profession is, I firmly believe that pre-pandemic, we were somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 years behind the times, at least as it relates to technology. Now, it’s not to say that the technology didn’t exist. It just means that it was not widely embraced throughout the profession. You think about different ways to engage with people going forward, and it’s different today than it was 24 months ago. I think about a friend of mine who has memory care facilities in Kansas City, Missouri. He’s got five different locations. This is primarily private pay, private pay homes. These are people who are going to put their loved one into their care to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. So these people are going to commit mom, dad, their sister, their loved one, whomever it is into a $200,000 a year care facility. 98% of all of his communication with those families prior to admittance, 98% of all communication takes place over text, okay. 98% of all communication prior to admitting their loved one into the care takes place over text. Now, I’m not here suggesting that that’s the direction that we as a profession are headed. But I do suggest it is a very effective means.

Chris Cruger
You look at this slide here. 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes. I daresay, probably everybody who’s participating in this webinar today within arm’s reach has one of these. And that’s just the reality that we live in today. So I suggest to you, when you go back and you think about the amount of unresolved issues as a result of this pandemic, one way to reach out to these people and one way to connect (and you’ll see it in a couple of other areas as we go through this presentation), is through text message and after-care. It is a door that is wide open right now and one that we ought to pay its due attention.

Chris Cruger
How many people associate the word convenience with price? Well, I know in some cases I do, but the reality of it is convenience is the new currency. 21% of all consumers say that they are willing to pay for convenience. I consider myself in that category. I don’t want to deal with the hassle, the simpler you make it for me, I’m willing to pay for it. One of the things that I didn’t mention is about the study this year, we actually conducted six follow on focus groups, one of which was around convenience, and we asked the question, what would you be willing to pay for convenience if we made this simpler for you? What would you be willing to pay? Well, the statistics tells us that 21% are willing to pay more. The responses from the focus group where everything from $500 $750, $1,000, 25%, the reality of it is we are a convenient society and we’re willing to pay for it.

Chris Cruger
Now, when you think about technology, I mentioned earlier that we as a profession have been considerably behind the times. I dare suggest that as a result of this pandemic, we’ve become semi-current. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re working and trending in that direction. The reality of it is that technology has permeated every facet of our lives again, our lives. I think about this statistic here. I think about my father, my parents, who are both in their 80’s. They are at doctor’s appointments every single day. I’ve said this before, but if I didn’t know any better, my parents terminology for going to the doctors each and every day leads me to believe that I’ve got no idea what they’re doing constantly because it is three or four different doctor’s appointments every day. My father, who to this day has an AOL email address, all of the letters of which are in all caps, he never turned on a computer to do anything other than play Solitaire. He’s developed a little bit of an Ebay problem, but here he is. He is having virtual doctor’s appointments, day in and day out. This became part of his daily life through COVID. I still remember when somebody from my office came in and said that they had a virtual dentist appointment. It is a different way of interacting with the consumer today, like never before. Who would have ever thought that you’re having a virtual doctor’s appointment? The reality is that televisits, telehealth increased over 700% as a result of the pandemic. The reason this is so relevant is it is a different way of experiencing things and each and every consumer that we interact with, the communities that we serve, they are doing things differently. That over 75 group, that increased to change their opinions at a rate of 75%, these are the people who are experiencing new ways of doing things like never before.

Chris Cruger
49% of all consumers say that they can demonstrate how much they care by simply attending the live streaming of a funeral and signing a digital register book. 49%. That number is up from 25% twelve months ago. It has doubled. So when you think about your business model today, if half of your people feel that it’s appropriate to simply log on and attend the live streaming, how is that going to affect your physical plan and what your locations need to look like going forward? Where are you going to invest your money going forward? Is it going to be in technology, or are we going to be building out a 400 or 500 person chapel? The way that we think about these things is different because our consumer is thinking about them differently. 44% of all consumers expect live streaming to be part of your permanent offering. They expect it to be part of your basic service offering. Now, here’s the scary thing. 79%, 80% of those people said they’re not willing to pay for it. The bare minimum expectation for service is that you’re going to provide live-streaming to your families, and 80% aren’t going to pay for it. So what does that mean? It means you darn well better know what your pricing looks like. You better make sure that you price properly, and you also better make sure you’re covering what is going to be a new expense, right? Whether it’s a live-streaming or it’s the technology, there’s a cost to it. And this is where, again, how does it impact our business model? We have to make sure that we’re taking this into account going forward.

So what is the winning behaviors? You’ve got to seamlessly integrate your technology through your entire operation. Whether that be through the arrangement conference, through live streaming, through your after-care or frankly, all the way in the beginning to your marketing. It is absolutely critical that technology permeates every facet of your operating model, and you got to make sure that your people are trained on it. You can’t just drop these things on and not provide the support for your people because it is a different way of doing things. And you have to understand that these, while they might have been nice to have at some point, these are the fundamental expectations of the consumer today. And if we don’t provide it to them, somebody else will. And that’s one of the things that I want you to take away from this is, if not you, then who? Because if you’re in that blessed position right now where you don’t have competition to the extent that you don’t meet the expectations of the consumer, you may very well have that competition into the future. So if not you, then who? If you’re not willing to do this, somebody else will be.

Chris Cruger
So convenience, let’s talk a little bit about convenience and how that is impacting each and every one of us in our daily lives. You look back at the pandemic and over the twelve months of 2020, the increase in online grocery sales was $2.1 billion. So $2.1 billion increase of people ordering their groceries online. Now, I would suggest to you that there was probably far more than $2.1 billion of commerce conducted in the death care profession in 2020 because we’re pretty much starting from zero. But again, once again, convenience is a critical aspect to each and every one of our daily lives.

Chris Cruger
15% of all consumers want you to make a house call. They want you to come to them. So 15% want you to come to them to make that arrangement, whether it be for memorialization or for the funeral. Now on its own, that’s not an alarming statistic. But when coupled with this, 41% want to make their arrangements virtually. So 15% want a house call, 41% want to make their arrangements virtually, 56% (more than half of all consumers) are looking to make their arrangements in a different way than they were a couple of years ago. So when you think about the fact that 56% of all consumers are looking for a different way of interacting with us, of which, by the way, remember the statistic from several slides ago, 49% don’t even want to use us for their celebration, whether it be at the funeral home or the cemetery. We have 56% over here. They’ll never want to cross our doorstep to make those arrangements. Half of the people want to have their celebration without us involved. We got some serious headwind here, and what it means is we have to be flexible in the way that we interact with the consumer and change that experience for the consumer going forward.

Chris Cruger
Remember that slide? The second highest reason, the second biggest reason why you’re driving consumers away today is that your website is difficult to navigate? 74% of all consumers expect, they expect to find your pricing online. 66% expect to view your products online, which leads me to believe that they don’t really know what they want, which goes all the way back to the pricing. The FTC has made it hard enough for us with our general price lists, and that is not what these people are looking to see. What these people are looking for is they want some direction. They want to know what they’re getting themselves into. They’re looking to understand how much our goods and services are going to cost when they walk in that door. The reality of it is 74% of these people are looking at already expected to find your pricing online. Now, I would suggest to you that if 74% of consumers expect to find your pricing online, what percentage do you think have actually looked online? I would suggest to you that it’s pretty darn, at least 74% if not a lot more than that. One of the questions that somebody asked me was, how do you sync this statistic up with the fact that 80 some odd percent of consumers only call one funeral home? Well, I would say the reality of it is, of course, they’re only calling one because they’ve done all their research online. This is an educated consumer today. We can get anything we want from the comfort of our own couch and just simply hopping on Google. They already know what they want by the time they’re calling you.

Chris Cruger
And this is probably the most alarming statistic of them all. 47% of all consumers will only do business with companies that provide that greater level of convenience. You make your pricing available online, you make the arrangement, the interaction with the consumer on their terms, whether it be a house call, whether it be virtually. 47% of all consumers, say given an alternative, they will go somewhere else if you do not make this process convenient and simple on them. Now, a lot of people would say 47%, that’s ludicrous. Okay, maybe it is. But again, these are the facts. These are the statistics. But think of it this way. Each and every one of you, if you were to only lose 10%, 15%, 20% of your business because you fail to meet the needs of that consumer, what would happen to your business if 15%, 20% of your call volume, your sales, your revenue, any of the above were to go away? What happens to your profitability? Did your profitability go down 15% to 20%? Heavens, no. But the high fixed cost that we all have, we’re looking at probably 50% or 60% of your cash flow. Your profitability goes up in smoke because we fail to make this experience convenient for the consumer. So I would focus on this and think about that. This is not about absolutes. It’s not black and it’s not white. But when you have 47% of consumers saying that they’re willing to go somewhere else, just if you don’t make this the type of experience that they’re looking for, it goes back to, if not you, then who? So if we’re not going to meet those needs and you’re blessed not to have that competition today, I dare say, that if you’re not willing to adapt and meet those needs, you’re vulnerable for competition going forward.

Chris Cruger
Winning behaviors: Make it a customer centric experience. Make it simple to use. Think about it frankly, in your own terms. Think about what sort of an experience you want, not the experience that you think that each of these families should have. You need to think about what the consumer is looking for and you have to make it convenient, make it transparent. We can get access to information just about any information that we need, just from the comfort of our own homes, with our phones and other means right now. Make this a simple experience for the consumer.

Pre-need: the desire to pre-need as a result of the pandemic is higher today than at any other point in history. We have a new sense of awareness of our own mortality. I know that I do. And the reality of it is this number was 56% twelve months ago. As a result of the pandemic, 75% of funeral consumers and 75% of cemetery consumers all are inclined to prearrange their funerals and their memorialization choices today. Now, going back, you remember that 43% of all consumers experienced the death of a friend or a loved one. Well, those people, the 75% of which said they didn’t get to say goodbye, 66% didn’t get to see their loved one, the ones who have those unresolved issues, they’re even more inclined. They have a higher propensity to the tune of 80%. So four out of five of all of those consumers want to pre-arrange their funeral and they want to do it now. They have that new, heightened awareness of their own mortality, and they want to make sure that they get their wishes sealed and confirmed right now. Now, here’s the other thing about these people. Not only are four in five of them inclined to prearrange, they’re going to spend more.

Chris Cruger
They’re going to spend to the tune of 10% more than every other consumer. So not only do these people have a heightened awareness, they want to hear from you. 75% that are saying that they didn’t get to say goodbye, that are absolutely susceptible to that after-care, they’re willing to spend more to the tune of about $800 more. So you have an opportunity to reach out to these people today and do it in a different way and get in touch with them a lot sooner and a lot quicker than some of the more traditional ways that we’ve done in the past. But with doing so, also comes a considerable new level of responsibility. What used to be that face-to-face, one-on-one interaction, more of the paper documents is now much more of a virtual exchange. It opens the door for new behavior, new cutting corners, and also data security issues. So one of the things that we have to be very cognizant with this absolute influx of technology in our profession, the way that we do things in our business model, is there is a considerable new level of responsibility that goes with this new way of doing things. Winning behaviors: If you embrace pre-planning, probably not in the first or second quarter of 2020, but more towards the third and the fourth in the early part of 2021, you probably are doing pretty well. Listen, be flexible, adjust to doing things the way that the consumer is asking you to.

Chris Cruger
So how do we tie this all together? 67% of consumers say their attitudes have changed because of new ways of doing things. I mentioned this earlier, I know the way that I do things is different today than it was a couple of years ago. Different than it was twelve months ago. Frankly, it was different than it was six months ago. And one of the things that’s happened as a result of this pandemic is a much more elevated position of our profession as a result of the pandemic. As a result of the State, National and other associations that we all participate in and their efforts to be recognized as last responders. But frankly, all the media that each and every one of you garnered through the last 18 plus months has taken the profession to new heights. Frankly, it’s been a long time coming. I would actually say thank you to each and every one of you for all of your efforts. I know it has not been easy. We as a profession have won. We have won as a result of this pandemic and it hadn’t been fun, per se. But because of all that hard work, we’ve been recognized and you all have been recognized for your efforts at heights probably never seen before in this profession. So a very hearty thank you to each and every one of you.

So here’s one of the realities, is we have to bridge the perception and the reality and that’s your role, right? So we as trusted advisors to work through these realities with the consumer is a critical facet of what separates those who succeed and those who don’t. And being that trusted adviser, listening to the consumer, listening to what the consumer is telling us and what they’re asking for, and we have to be that bridge to the consumer.

So in recap a little bit about who won in 2020, again, the last responders, each and every one of you. I thank you once again for all of your efforts, but we, as a profession have won on a number of different fronts, not only from the public perception and the recognition for the roles that we play, but also I’ll touch on this in a minute, but your financial well being has been quite improved as a result of this pandemic. Those who embrace technology, if you are positioned pre-pandemic, you probably rode right into this without as much fan fare, but those who are quick to adapt won as well. If you are willing to listen and change the way you are doing things, making this a customer-centric experience, you’re probably doing pretty well. And then likewise, if you embrace that premium opportunity more towards the third and the fourth quarter of 2020, and certainly as 2021 has emerged, if you paid some attention and captured that opportunity, you’re probably also doing pretty darn well.

Chris Cruger
So who are the winners? I mentioned this earlier about the last responders, looking across at some of the consolidators, SCI, StoneMor, Carriage, the consolidators make up somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% to 25% of our profession. So it’s fairly representative of how we’re doing. You look at revenue for most of these, profits were up. But look at market cap. Market cap, in simple terms, is value, the value of the business. SCI was up 25%. These numbers are a little bit dated. Frankly, if we look at these now, the numbers are up quite a bit more than they are on this slide. StoneMor – 170%, Carriage- 125%, all very significant gains. And my point being about who won? We did. We as operators, as owners, in whatever capacity that we are. Our financial well being is probably considerably better off today than it was 24 months ago. So all this hard work has paid dividends and has resulted in a significantly better financial position for each and every one of us.

Chris Cruger
But one of the keys that we have to focus on is the way that we operate has changed and it’s changed permanently. One of the things I mentioned earlier about the focus groups that we did, we did six of them. They ranged in size from eight to 16 people. So we’ve got video of all of this. But one of the themes that continued throughout, so if we had 75, 80 people that were participating in these focus groups, one of the themes that kept coming through, excuse me, was and we’re never going back. I would never think of it doing it anyway differently. Now that I’ve seen this, I won’t go back. So my point is that these are permanently altered behaviors.

Chris Cruger
One of the things that we thought when we did the second study was, was there going to be a rubber band effect. So were some of these numbers going to rebound. And the short answer is not materially. What’s really happened is we, as a profession, have adapted to that technology that’s really been part of our lives and every other facet. So it isn’t going back. Consumer attitudes and consumer preferences are different. Technology is permeating every facet of the business model, from as I say, literally, from your marketing all the way through to your after-care and everything in between. And that is going to impact the way that we conduct our business. I’ll talk in a moment about how our business models are affected. Well, the physical plan is different, where we invest our money is different, how we train our staff and frankly, the people that we hire are all going to be a little bit different going forward. And we have to be aware of that as we contemplate these things going forward. And part of that also goes to that technology is the price transparency. Again, there isn’t much that we can hide from people today.

Chris Cruger
We can talk about fake news. We all know about Google reviews. My father growing up, he used to say that 50 “atta boys” was worth one “you know what” the reality of it is today that just a little bit of negative press out there a little bit negative comments, and it has a ripple effect. We, as a society, have so much information available at our fingertips that it is absolutely critical that we communicate and we educate our consumers every chance we get, because that is what builds the trust in our connection with our consumer.

Chris Cruger
And that goes to the point of communication and transparency is absolutely critical. Through this whole process, the more that we interact with not only our staff but our consumers, it alleviates any of this doubt or frankly, the perception that we are not being completely honest and straightforward with our consumers. So communication is absolutely critical, particularly in a time of change. The quicker that we’re changing, and it starts with our very first consumers are our employees. If our employees don’t know what we expect and we’re not perfectly clear with them so that they can communicate that to our end consumer, then we’re missing the mark. Communication is absolutely critical in every facet of this process.

Staffing: How many people would say can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Well, that may be true. And I’m not suggesting for a second that every single old dog has to learn the new tricks. But what we have to think about is as we’re staffing or we’re looking to expand our staff and growing, we have to think about what skill sets do we need to augment our existing people? So the key isn’t necessarily to force this down every single person’s throat, but figure out how are we going to supplement those people so that we support them. And in that support, we’ve got to train, we have to provide all of the resources necessary in order to make this happen. So when we’re thinking about our staffing going forward and it’s a little bit different today than it was certainly two years ago and certainly 20 years ago, we just have to be thinking about the bigger picture. And each person that we staff, or excuse me, that we hire into our staff has to be able to fill a role, to fill a need and to support, if not a certain person, but to support the needs of the organization as a whole. Every single person should be an add, and to the extent we have the luxury or the ability to do so, we need to make sure that we’re bringing on the best quality people that are available.

Chris Cruger
Your facilities: I mentioned this earlier, but we have 49% of all consumers saying that they can demonstrate how much they care by simply live-streaming a funeral, signing a digital register book. What does that say to the size of the services that you’re going to be holding into the future? They’re going to be different when you’re making decisions about where you’re going to invest money next year. One of the things that you have to take very seriously is your technology. This is a very critical component going forward. The consumer is telling us this is what they want. This is what they expect. This is part of your bare minimum offering. This is what the consumer is looking for. So as we are looking at our plans for the future, we absolutely have to think about what that consumer needs and what those wants are into the future.

Here’s the other thing, just because we make a change, I don’t care whether it’s to your GPL, whether it’s the way that we’re going to virtually interact with a consumer, whatever it is that we do, be willing to adapt. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, pivot do something differently. The point is, all of these things that we do, we have to learn as we go, every single day, every single week, every single month, we learn something differently. And what we need to be prepared to do is adapt as we go. So all of this kind of bringing it full circle, future of the profession, we have to prepare for flexibility. You got to be able to, I just mentioned it in the last slide, you got to be prepared to pivot when something works, great. Double down on it. When something doesn’t shift, do something a little bit differently.

Customer experience: we have to make this a convenient, simple process, as simple as we possibly can for the consumer, that’s what they’re asking for. Technology really needs to permeate every facet from the very early phases of your marketing and your interaction with your community all the way to the very end, in your after-care. Technology is a critical component in every facet of your business model today. Pre-planning: if it’s not a significant component of what you’re doing, it should be. Make it one. And then probably the most important, I would say, is the emergence of the last responder and the position of our profession in the eyes of the community, in the eyes of the public. The eyes of the media has been incredibly elevated as a result of all the hard work from each and every one of you. So that’s a real positive. It’s been a long time coming. Again I thank you for that. But we as a profession are doing some exciting things.

Chris Cruger
Now, a lot of this stuff that I’ve talked about today can be construed as scary. I want to kind of pull this full circle and say, I believe that there has never been a better time to be in this profession. This is some of the most exciting times this profession has seen in at least the 30 years or so that I’ve been involved. So I think the opportunity is tremendous. That is, if you’re willing to be just a little bit more progressive than the next person. So it doesn’t mean that you have to jump leaps and bounds here. It just means to be a little bit more progressive and embrace what the consumer is asking for. Embrace that opportunity. Move on to listening to what they’re asking for and I promise you the best of times are yet to come for us as a profession, and I for one am excited to be a part of it. I’m excited to be associated with each and every one of you. And I look forward to many years to come in this profession. So with that, I’d like to thank each and every one of you. I’d like to turn this back over to Doug and maybe open this up for a question and answer.

Douglas Farrow
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Certainly very interesting. We’ve actually had Kerry Munday monitoring the questions. So, Kerry, do you mind reading the questions for us?

Kerry Munday
Definitely. So the first question I have is, what did you find to be the most interesting finding in the study this year?

Chris Cruger
I think probably the most interesting finding to me is how black and white the consumer is about options. If you don’t give me options and to the extent that they exist elsewhere, I will go somewhere else. So what I’m seeing, was a little bit surprising to me, is much more of a, as I said, that black and white approach that if you don’t meet my needs, you don’t meet the experience, what I’m looking for, to the extent that there is an alternative, I’m going somewhere else.

Kerry Munday
Perfect. The second question I have is I have a smaller business. Where do I begin with adding a pre-need program?

Chris Cruger
There are a number of excellent third party providers who can assist with that. There’s Homesteaders, Precoa, there’s a number of very solid people out there that can assist you with it. We can certainly give you some recommendations. Golden Considerations, another great firm, all of which they do a very fine job, and they’re probably the best. They’re the experts in it. And I would point you in their direction.

Kerry Munday
Thank you. What percentage of companies do you think will go back to the same way of doing things rather than embracing what you have discussed?

Chris Cruger
Unfortunately, I go back to that a third, a third, a third example that I gave, or at least that was more of my opinion than anything else. And I think that third over here that has failed to adapt. Unfortunately, there’s going to be quite a few of those who will cease to exist over time. And unfortunately, I think there’s probably going to be a couple of thousand or more firms over the next 24 to 36 months that will just simply end up selling their business for real estate because they will not adapt. And I go back to the if not you, then who, to the extent that you don’t adapt. Similar to the question about what surprised me, the most people are going to go elsewhere and you look at the influx of online providers, different types of operators out there. You become very susceptible if you don’t adapt to the new way of doing things.

Kerry Munday
And the last question I have at the moment is, what do you think is an, sorry, let me try that again. What do you think is an emerging skill set of the new funeral director?

Chris Cruger
Sorry, Kerry, can you repeat that?

Kerry Munday
Sure. The last question is, what do you think is the emerging skill set of the new funeral director?

Chris Cruger
Well, I would say the technology skill set. That’s very broad. But I would say one of our clients said to me at one point, I kind of feel like I need to be a producer in the new way of doing things. I need to be a film editor. I have to do things differently. I think the skill set is that different way, I mean, interacting, OpusXenta is a great example. How do we conduct our business through technology differently today than we did before the days of the paper contracts and those things are fast becoming a way of the past and a different way of doing things. So I think technology is certainly that skill set for sure.

Kerry Munday
Okay, that’s all the questions I have right now.

Douglas Farrow
Okay, thank you Kerry. Looks like we’re about out of time today. Chris, thank you for your insight. I hope everyone found this information helpful. As I mentioned, today’s webinar and all the slides will be available to you if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to either Chris or myself and hope everyone enjoys their day. Again, thank you, Chris. Bye now.

Chris Cruger
Thanks everybody. Thanks, Doug and Kerry.

Kerry Munday
Thank you.