Our Survey Says
by Vicki Barlow
• Published 19/08/2022
We are proud to have been supporting the funeral industry for over 100 years.
In that time it's fair to say that both the funeral and the publishing sectors have seen many changes, none more so than in the last couple of years.
We want to make sure we are in the best position to support the industry for the next 100 years so, as part of our continued development, we sent out an online survey to over 100 Funeral Directors. This was specifically designed to help us ensure our products and services continue to meet their needs and exceed expectations.
So, what did we discover...
We are immensely proud of this result, customer service really is everything to us.
The majority of people in the Funeral Notices team have been with us for over 10 years, with several team members reaching milestones of 25 + years. The team specialise in supporting Funeral Directors so to hear they are happy with our service is music to our ears and we will continue to work hard to maintain our high standards of customer service.
We know lots of changes were quickly ushered in to adapt for working in pandemic conditions and many are here to stay.
One thing we are proud to have been able to do to help was offering free online notices for all Funeral Directors; our way of giving something back to bereaved families during the pandemic.
We continue to offer this to new Online Partners and have really focussed our time since the pandemic on improving the Online Partner offering to provide even more great value to Funeral Directors. We've launched a new embedded feed option to help Online Partners display notices on their company website and have improved the free advertising they receive on funeral-notices.co.uk.
Technology has also improved the effectiveness of in-memory donations, something we will touch on in our next result.
During the pandemic, we noticed a huge spike in both the amount being donated and the number of donation services added to notices. This upward trend has continued into 2022, with some amazing totals donated to charities in memory of loved ones.
Charities prefer online collections too as it saves them time and money in administration and of course donating online also helps facilitate the benefit of Gift Aid to a collection total, adding 25p to every £1 donated.
An interactive tribute page
Much of our history is focussed around newspaper notices. In fact we have over 4.95 million new and historic notices published to funeral-notices.co.uk - many of which also appeared in a regional newspaper. Our traditional print notices are exceptionally popular and we continue to support you in booking these. However, we understand the need to offer families more than a newspaper notice.
Notices have become so much more than an announcement or an intimation - they are lifelong tributes to a loved one. Our funeral notices combine the traditional announcement with the changing technologies available to support families in their grief.
The feedback we receive from families and Funeral Directors is overwhelmingly positive, with families taking comfort from the tributes on their notices. It is really humbling to read each and every notice we publish; reading through the tributes you can really build a picture of what their life was like and what they mean to the people that love them.
All notices that appear on Funeral Notices remain online forever with people returning to add tributes whenever they wish. It’s really easy to search for notices by location on funeral-notices.co.uk and many people visit every day to browse the latest notices in their community, taking the time to add a message or make a donation on the tribute page of someone they knew.
To hear 84% of Funeral Directors say they believe having notices online is important to their business tells us we are in a brilliant position to help them facilitate this, as we move forward together to blend the old with the new.
Maybe you took part in our survey or perhaps you'd like to hear more about becoming an Online Partner of Funeral Notices and the benefits that provides? We love to hear from you so please get in touch by completing the short form below.
Thank you for taking the time to read these results and if you did take part - thank you so much. Our aim is to help you to provide families with a lasting legacy for their loved one on funeral-notices.co.uk and we could not do that without your feedback and support.
Please
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