What to Know About Using a Case Management System...

What to Know About Using a Case Management System as a Funeral Professional

As a funeral professional, you use many tools to help your business run smoothly and best serve your client families in their time of need. One tool you may find beneficial is a case management system. In this blog post, we provide information on this tool and tips for using the Gather integration with Homesteaders.

What is a Case Management System

A case management system is a tool to organize your customer interactions and information. You may already use one at your funeral home, or you may consider adding one to your business tools. These tools can streamline information about your client families and help you organize details in one place. They can also increase your efficiency as a funeral professional while helping you create even more personalized care for your client families.

Why Funeral Professionals Should Use a Case Management System

"Funeral services are getting increasingly complex, as are the regulatory requirements. Having a central place to keep tabs on things like service details, paperwork, regulatory requirements and aftercare is so important, especially for firms with multiple locations or large teams," Danielle Burmeister, Homesteaders VP-Marketing Communications said. "A thoughtful, robust case management system is the ideal solution for many funeral providers."

Tips for Using the Gather Integration

While many case management systems exist, it's important you find the right one for your firm. Homesteaders recently integrated with Gather's web-based case management platform, and we have five tips to help you make the most of the integration if you use or plan on using Gather.

1. Access Preneed and At-Need Cases

"The integration between Gather and Homesteaders is a nice benefit," Danielle said. "Being able to access preneed and at-need cases all in one place is a big timesaver for funeral providers. I also really loved Gather's intuitive design - it's easy for a funeral provider to pick up and use the system on day one."

3. Try A.I.

In a world where A.I. is becoming an increasingly useful tool for all professions, funeral professionals may also find that this tool can be helpful when creating meaningful services for client families.

"We've been thinking a lot about A.I. and have implemented it into our platform," Zach Chatterton, Gather CEO and Founder noted on Homesteaders' Calling Hours podcast. "We spent a lot of time making it as user friendly as possible, so [funeral professionals] can save time, and their client families can access additional services."

Gather provides an A.I.-integrated obituary builder, thoughtfully designed to help you create meaningful, personalized obituaries for your client families. Discover more about this helpful feature.

3. Explore "The Remember Page" Capability

"Gather offers customizable 'Remember' pages that offer families an enhanced obituary experience to help them crowdsource memories and photos of the deceased. It's the kind of experience that really elevates the consumer experience and helps position the funeral provider as a service leader in their community," Danielle shared.

On the Calling Hours podcast, Zach highlighted the impact of The Remember Page, saying, "The amount of interaction and engagement we get on [The Remember Page] is so meaningful to our team, because it's part of our DNA that we want to help, and The Remember Page is how we do that."

Danielle, who hosts Calling Hours, added, "Stories that aren't told, are lost. I love that Gather captures [those stories]."

See an example of The Remember Page here.

4. Discover Value-Added Services

"Gather also offers helpful value-added services like tracking for the deceased and live streaming," Danielle mentioned. "Those features aren't always included with other case management offerings, but they make a big difference for the end users."

Danielle also noted that Gather's live streaming service is a useful benefit for families, "It's something Gather built out in the early days of the COVID pandemic, and it continues to provide value for family members and friends who want to share in the funeral and memorial services for their loved one but are not able to physically attend."

5. Rely on the Gather Team

"My biggest tip is to rely on the knowledgeable Gather team," Danielle suggested. "They offer easy, fast onboarding and have a huge library of training videos. They also provide live customer support so users can get questions answered quickly by experts who know the Gather platform inside and out."

Do you use a case management system at your funeral home? What do you love about it? Discover more about the Gather integration with Homesteaders here.