By exceeding families’ funeral expectations, you can show them that you truly care about honoring their loved one’s life. Whether it’s before the funeral, during the service, or following up afterward, there are many ways that you can go the extra mile. 

From providing educational resources to kind gestures, here are six ideas to get your funeral home started! 

How to Exceed Families’ Funeral Expectations Before the Service 

1. Give Families Care Packages 

Help families stock up on food, toiletries, and other supplies while their grief is still very new. This way, they don’t have to tackle running errands. For help gathering supplies, you could ask your community for donations, or see about partnering with a local grocery store. 

Not sure what to include in your care packages? A few ideas are canned goods, cereal, granola bars, toilet paper, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. Check out this blog post for more ideas! 

2. Provide Them with Grief Resources 

Along with groceries and other supplies, you also can provide your families with grief resources. These can be books, blogs, or your own grief resources. To put all your grief resources in one place, you could create a grief guide. Along with your recommended books and blogs, you also could include contact information for grief organizations and counselors, dates for upcoming grief-related events that you’re hosting, suggestions for healthy ways to cope with grief, and any other helpful information. 

With a Frazer-powered website, your families also can sign up for the 365 Days of Healing grief email subscription. By signing up, they’ll receive a daily message of comfort and support as they’re grieving their loss. 

Ways to Exceed Funeral Expectations During the Planning Process and Service 

3. Brainstorm Funeral Personalization Ideas 

There are many creative ways to personalize a funeral. To help families create a service as unique as their loved one’s life story, these are a few ways you can help: 

• Provide families with tables, hooks, and other supplies for displaying mementos. 
• Help families choose a funeral theme, such as a loved one’s profession or hobby. 
• Learn the little details about their loved one to make the obituary as personalized as possible. 
• Serve their loved one’s favorite dishes at the post-funeral reception.

4. Invest in Innovative Technology Solutions 

With the right funeral technology solutions, you can offer your families even more ways to personalize their loved one’s funeral. Features like an online memorial wall for leaving condolences and software for creating funeral stationery products can help take personalization to the next level. With Frazer, your funeral home can get these tools and so much more! 

Continue to Exceed Expectations After the Funeral Service Is Over 

5. Offer Families Memorial Gifts 

Like we mentioned above, investing in funeral personalization software like Tribute Center makes it easy to create one-of-kind mementos, such as prayer cards and bookmarks. For the holiday season, you could offer your families holiday remembrance ornaments to display on their tree or even year-round. Explore our collection of crystal and glass ornaments to learn more! 

If a family wants a DIY project, you could share some ideas. A few examples are a T-shirt blanket, photo wreath, and painted memorial stones. If you want to take it a step further, you could even have the craft directions on hand, so it’s less work for the family. Or host a community event for making the memorial crafts. 

6. Ask Them for Feedback 

Asking families for feedback on their experience working with your funeral home is a great way to show them that you value their opinions. It’s also a great way for your team to get an insight into what families think about your funeral home. To get feedback, you could send them a short survey link via email. You can even get permission to use their feedback as a testimonial.  

Want to learn more ways to exceed your families’ funeral expectations? Download our free Extra Mile eBook!