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Finding the Key to Success
This photo is from an ad campaign for the
Key Memories program, the personalization
program of Keystone Group Holdings.
Jim Price's father owned a small funeral home in South Carolina. It was fulfilling work. Every family hugged him, thanked him and told him they couldn't have gotten through that terrible time without him. Cremation was virtually unknown; South Carolina did not have a single crematorium.
In the mid-'60s, the Price family moved to California. They were in for a culture shock. The cremation rate was 13 percent statewide -- and much higher in the San Diego County area where they were now involved in funeral service. Many families were choosing direct cremation with no memorialization. Clearly, those families saw no value in the services and products the funeral home had to offer.
Though still in high school, Jim Price had already gotten a glimpse of the challenge he would face when he followed in his father's footsteps and became a funeral director: how to reinvent funeral service so that families would continue to value it. He now believes he has some of the answers.
Price is chief operating officer for Keystone Group Holdings Inc., a Tampa, Florida-based company founded by Price and three partners four years ago. Keystone owns, to date, 111 funeral homes, 13 crematories and three cemeteries, most in small or medium-sized markets. The company is still acquiring properties. But Price's focus -- his passion -- is the Key Memories program.
Key Memories is a program structured to make sure every family -- preneed as well as at-need -- is encouraged to personalize every aspect of the funeral, from the visitation to the committal service. Families are provided with guidelines and examples to help spark their imaginations, as well as the funeral director's help and the use of fixtures such as photo collage boards. [See examples, pages 26-27.]
The program developed from Price's conviction that offering every family an extremely personalized experience is the right way to serve and the best way to prosper. Price's goal is to train all of Keystone's employees to be as knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Key Memories as he is, and to make sure every family served by the company is offered a personalized funeral experience. When Keystone acquires a funeral home, one of the prerequisites is that all employees buy into the corporate culture, which very much includes Key Memories.
Isn't everyone doing it?
Personalization has become an industry buzzword, but Price thinks there's still a long, long way to go, that talking about it is a lot easier than doing it consistently. Keystone has spent two years developing and refining its program, first at 10 test locations and now throughout the company. In some cases, funeral home managers are still working out details about selection room fixturing and how to provide idea books, which are filled with photos to show families examples of how to create a personalized visitation, funeral ceremony and committal service, to all families before they come in to make arrangements.
Explaining, in detail, to ICFM readers how Keystone plans to build family loyalty and market share might seem like an odd thing to do. Why not quietly go about your business and catch competitors by surprise? Price doesn't seem concerned about making the private company's business public; he's confident that Keystone will prosper regardless of what others do. If competitors pick up ideas and copy or improve on them, that will simply mean more satisfied families and be good for the industry, he says.
What led to the development of the Key Memories program?
Price: It was developed through my personal experiences and observations over the past 35 years that there's been this continual erosion of our client families' perceived value in funeral homes' commodities and services. As an industry, we have often failed to realize it and appropriately respond to their needs.
After I was licensed in the business 30 years ago, I really wondered about the future of funeral service. I saw a differentiation between traditional markets and where we were in California. I feared that at some point it would be the same in the rest of the country. I wasn't really sure I wanted to stay in this business. I loved taking care of families, and I loved becoming more involved in management, but I was really concerned about the erosion that would possibly happen over time.
What's happened? I think the industry definitely had a negative view of cremation; we didn't embrace it and look for alternatives soon enough. I think selection rooms were very confusing to consumers regarding real value differences in merchandise, and that the entire experience of going into traditional selection rooms was a negative one.
Again, this is a personal observation -- and some of this is difficult -- but in many cases, the products and services were overpriced. There was a certain amount of defensive merchandising that occurred; many independents were very quick to complain about higher prices that some of the consolidators charged. However, they would also raise their prices just below them.
Too many companies focused on short-term benefit over long-term perspective, which is a nice way of saying the word "greed." It's so important in any industry that there be a true balance between taking care of shareholders, consumers and employees.
From a funeral service management standpoint, poor quality of preneed business has been written by many funeral homes over the years, looking more at volume rather than the quality of that business. In some cases the funds weren't appropriately invested. Third-party sellers, retail stores, memorial societies and the World Wide Web have also recently become issues. There was, and continues to be, a lack of educational training programs and inexperienced and/or passive management.
Funeral directors have assumed much more of a functionary role rather than a facilitator role. We were very good at taking care of the families that desired the status quo, cookie-cutter funeral. But we didn't serve as more of a facilitator in attempting to connect with families emotionally. By that, I mean getting to more personally know about the deceased, their interests, hobbies, etc. A unique, meaningful tribute, a celebration of the life lived -- creating this type of service would have been so much more of a positive experience for our families, friends and attendees. Instead, we confused efficiency with effectiveness.
A definite lack of meaningful personalization has been an issue, and meaningful is the key -- what's meaningful to the public, not what is meaningful to funeral directors. There's been a real breakthrough in our industry with personalization. There are many people involved in many aspects of it. As an industry, we're responding, but unfortunately, it took having to have our backs against the wall.
There were people talking about certain personalizations a long time ago, and of course cemeteries have done it more effectively than funeral homes, through memorials. They moved away from upright monuments with memorial parks, but now offer upright monument sections. This has been a positive development in allowing the families to express the legacy of a person's life differently.
Unfortunately, most of what has gone on in personalization in funerals has been driven by the family rather than the funeral director.
In the past, most consumers would never say, "If you can't do this for me, I'm going to find somebody who can." However, the baby boomers and the generation behind us [GenX] will. In fact, they may not even come to the funeral home -- they may choose to go on the Internet and try to figure it all out.
They may choose the traditional service for mom and dad, but say to themselves, "This isn't for me."
A lot of baby boomers say they plan to be cremated.
Price: I lived in California, and I arranged those $225 direct cremations in the '70s and '80s. We almost never had a family that wanted cremation come back and decide they wanted to have a burial -- it just didn't happen. We were very happy when they wanted to have any memorialization, a memorial service or an urn. We were always pleased, because so often they only wanted cremation, scattering at sea and that was it. What we're now finding is that cremation families are definitely connecting with Key Memories. In some cases they're changing their minds and saying, "I think we want burial, and here's the reason."
Now that they're being made aware of the options to personalize the service, they see value in creating their own meaningful tribute to their loved one, as opposed to giving a stamp of acceptance to the traditional "cookie-cutter service" their parents and grandparents accepted. Boomers are embracing Key Memories. Planning with boomers is now becoming very positive.
What is different about your personalization program?
Price: It's a proprietary program; we feel that gives us a competitive advantage -- people like brands. We think we can co-brand the name of the funeral home with Key Memories, so that people never lose sight of that heritage, and that goodwill the funeral home has.
Believe me, I'm aware that anyone can do a lot of this, but it's not as easy as it looks. The funeral director must understand exactly how to engage and connect with people. We've geared our Key Memories Training Program to help our funeral directors better understand this vital component of the program. What we feel is really important is that we connect with the family during every single arrangement, every time -- not some of the time but every time, whether it's an at-need family or a preneed arrangement. Some funeral directors talk about it, but they don't do it every single time, and that's the discipline we're trying to create as the culture of our company.
Funeral directors are creatures of habit, and their habit is not to engage in an arrangement in this manner. More often than not, funeral directors want to sit down and talk about vital statistics and other business aspects because it's safe -- they don't have to connect emotionally. Our training program helps our funeral directors make this shift from business conversation to a more personal conversation about the deceased.
How does the Key Memories program fit into your Internet strategy?
Price: Our Web site, www.keymemories.com, has been designed to introduce families to this new program and walk them through the process of planning a meaningful funeral tribute. The site can also help a family locate a funeral home that exclusively offers the Key Memories program, suggest various funeral tribute themes and share testimonials about the value of a Key Memories service.
The site offers our client families the opportunity to work with us from the comfort of their own homes. We also give them the opportunity to begin planning their own service by providing them with a planning form.
How are you implementing Key Memories?
Price: We started with 10 test firms in the fall of 1999. We were really looking for a broad variation in size and type of market. [See table.] We teamed up with these locations and had conference calls once a month, did training for three days, received input from them and created advertising for them. Training included the entire funeral home staff. Since mid-2000, the program has been introduced into all Keystone-owned firms; some are further along than others.
We had some fairly simple materials to use at the beginning, and every month when we would have a conference call, we would spend 20 to 30 minutes discussing memory boards, memory tables, marketing materials, television ads and arrangement office and selection room fixturing. Then we would get into 30 minutes of sharing experiences. Our test firm employees genuinely connected with the program. They all became involved in the funeral business for the right reason -- they love helping people at a difficult time. But they were doing what they had always done. Now, with the Key Memories book and displays, the family starts to connect visually and also understand that the funeral director genuinely wants to make this not just another eleven o'clock funeral.
[Read some of the funeral directors' stories.]
Music, farewell letters, mini-events such as butterfly releases, eulogies delivered by close friends, online obituaries and condolence message opportunities and video memorial tributes are all part of it. Product is last on the list, because it will come anyway.
What happens is when families are connected, engaged and involved with the experience, they want to do all of the other things. The family is more inclined to want a personalized casket and vault. It's kind of like the carpet and drape theory. You think, well, all we're going to do is the drapes, but then when we do the drapes, the carpet doesn't look good. So, we don't focus on product, because we believe that comes anyway. Even if it doesn't, we think by taking care of families we can differentiate ourselves in the marketplace and we will grow market share long-term.
How much have you spent re-doing the selection rooms, training people and developing the materials?
Price: I don't know what the exact number is to date. I'd say we've invested at least $1 million in this program, between selection room fixturing, experience books, memory tables, memory boards and television, radio and newspaper marketing, as well as the training involved. It's not an enormous amount of money. At a typical funeral home we would have perhaps $8,000 to $12,000 invested in the selection room. However, one California selection room [pictured on facing page] cost approximately $60,000.
What sort of payback time are you looking at to recoup your investment?
Price: Payback is not our immediate concern. We are driven more by our belief that it's the right thing to do for our families. We know it will work.
We're not tied to the belief that, "If we don't gain $500 additional in an average sale with this program we've failed." We know over time we'll gain market share. There are no guarantees. Does that come a year from now or does that come two or three years from now? We may be very pleased to just sustain where we are. In certain markets that may be a success, based on who we're competing with. Every market is different.
Did you do market studies?
Price: Not in the traditional sense. Let me explain. During the past two and a half years, I've been on a lot of airplanes. I've had the chance to share pieces of the Key Memories program with hundreds of people not affiliated with the funeral industry, and they have always connected to this and always loved it. Every person started telling me what they were going to do for their mother or father -- or they'd ask me, "Why didn't our funeral home offer me that?"
One time we were in a restaurant reviewing photos for the Key Memories book and a young waitress came over and asked, "What do you do?" I said, "Before I tell you what we do, I have a couple of questions for you: Have you ever been to a funeral?" She said no. I said, "You mean no one's ever died in your family?" She said, "Well, yeah, my grandfather died, but I didn't have to go." I asked her, "What do you mean, you didn't have to go?" She said, "I was taking my finals and my mom and dad said it was OK if I didn't go." "Did you want to go?" "No." "Why?" "I didn't want to be there." It was clear to us that she saw going to a funeral as an extremely negative experience.
Then I said, "Let me show you what we do," and I shared some of the photos with her. She said, "Oh, wow. Let me tell you what I would do for my grandmother." I asked her, "Are you going to go to the funeral?" She said, "Absolutely, when my grandmother dies, I will go."
My comment to her was, "Don't let anybody talk you out of doing these things. Remember that death ends her life, not your relationship with her. Celebrating your memories will help you deal with your grief and make the service more meaningful for everyone." She left the restaurant because it was the end of her shift, but a few minutes later she came back and said, "Let me tell you what I would do if my dad died."
Recently I was at our funeral home in New Bern, North Carolina. The family of a city employee who had been electrocuted in a work accident was there. They knew they could go to the firm down the street that offered a free funeral to any city employee killed in the line of duty. But they were at one of our services three weeks before, and they'd never seen anything like it. That's the kind of funeral they wanted. How often is that going to happen? Who knows?
Here's another example: We have a funeral home in Barbourville, Kentucky, where the funeral director took a cherry casket that Batesville has life symbol corners for. He took the initiative to buy fishing reels and adapt them to the corners. Thirty-five miles away, we have another funeral home. The manager there told me he had a family come into his funeral home for a service for a man who loved to fish. The family sat down with him and said, "We know the casket we want; if you can't get it, we know where we can get it." They didn't care what it cost.
I'd like to tell you we've done extensive research and had focus group input. We haven't. But even though our "market studies" may be unusual, by talking with so many people outside funeral service and by hearing testimonials from our test locations, I know it works.
We have a Key Memories consumer opinion survey we are currently using for our 10 test firms. We'll soon have a customer service representative on staff who will do a telephone survey of all the families we serve. That's going to help us identify the value of the program. We're going to gain a lot of knowledge from the families.
The response from your funeral home staffs has been good?
Price: Ninety percent are totally engaged and love it; 5 percent we're kind of pulling along. Probably 5 percent are finally doing it because they're starting to understand this is not the flavor of the month for our company. This is who we are and what we do; it's our company's culture. We have teams of four or five funeral homes working together. The peer pressure from these teams has had a positive effect.
It's truly a staff morale builder. There are a lot of young people who are quite distressed about our industry today and wonder about future opportunities. We think this program helps.
If we don't change, people are going to get up and walk out of traditional funeral homes. A funeral home that has on their sign a line that says "established in 1905" and sits back and says "What the heck, we've been here for 95 years, we're going to do just fine," that doesn't change, may be adding another line to it that says "slowly but surely going out of business," because what we've done in the past is not going to cut it in the future.
In Pacific Grove, California, with a 75 percent cremation rate, when we acquired that funeral home, almost all of those cremations were immediate cremations with very little merchandise and services associated with them. It's a relatively affluent community -- it's Pebble Beach, Carmel, Monterey Peninsula. Those people didn't want anything in the way of funeral services, but they'd spend $10,000 on a party. So there is opportunity in those kinds of markets.
If they went to a wedding planner today and said, "I want a circus tent that will hold 3,000 people," she'd get it for them. But traditionally if they went and asked a funeral director, he'd say, "I don't know what to tell you," because it's outside of this little world that we've always done things in. If we're not careful, we're going to wake up and find that somebody more progressive, outside funeral service, sees this opportunity. But who are the most natural people to do this? Funeral directors and cemeterians.
Although everyone involved in funeral service has contributed to the problem over the years, we now think we have somewhat of a solution to some of the issues facing funeral service. We've only touched the tip of the iceberg of what can be done. I really believe that. I think there are many things that could be meaningful that no one's thought of yet.
In my opinion, funeral service is in trouble if it tries to approach this in any other manner. If this concept isn't the answer, then what is? I think we can do this and do it well and be the leader in it. I think our families and the people who attend services will see tremendous value in it and will appreciate it.
It's not about selling a product, it's about satisfying our families by helping them create a personal and meaningful tribute to their loved ones. We have to educate families about their choices and encourage them to create funerals that are a one-of-a-kind celebration memorializing their loved one's life.
What we want is for people to come into our funeral homes and leave there and think "I am so surprised at that service, I have never seen anything like that -- that was really about Harry's life."
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