The Ugly Truth: Baby Boomers’ Thoughts on Funeral Service

Customer Service Funeral Industry News March 10, 2014
CDFuneralNews

We believe that every funeral director should have the tools to succeed. With the help of our field-leading partners, we publish daily funeral industry news and provide free tools to help our readers advance their careers and grow their businesses. Our editorial focus on the future, covering impact-conscious funeral care, trends, tech, marketing, and exploring how today's funeral news affects your future.


The Ugly Truth: Baby Boomers’ Thoughts on Funeral Service

Article from: FuneralOne

It’s nearly everyday that I preach about the importance of offering more than just a traditional funeral service. Most people in the funeral profession will tell you the same thing: Baby Boomers don’t want a traditional send off, they want a celebration of their life. But do you really understand why Baby Boomers don’t want to end their life in a traditional manner?

Sometimes, it’s hard to get into the minds of our families, even if we’re considered to be in their demographic ourselves. For me, the most helpful way to see how my target demographic feels about my products or services is to have them actually tell me, word-for-word, how they make them feel. And luckily enough, the Funeral Service Foundation and Olson Zaltman Associates have teamed up to offer funeral professionals exactly that: real life stories from Baby Boomers on how they feel about traditional funeral services.

Read each of these quotes, print them, highlight them, cut them out and glue them to your computer screen… whatever you do, don’t ignore them. After reading what Baby Boomers really have to say about funeral service, you’ll have a better understanding of why they don’t want a traditional service: 1.  “Traditional funerals are mindless. You just go through the motions. I think, ‘Is that all this person was worth? Didn’t anybody think any more of that person to want to really show what that person’s life was about or why they loved that person or what they liked about that person?’ It’s kind of sad to think they didn’t put any energy into their supposed ‘celebration’ of life… we just have to bury the old broad and let’s get on with our lives.”

-Jody

2. “When you shut those doors, [leaving the funeral home] it’s silence. I almost feel a relief that I’m out of there and I can hear the wind and the cars going by. [In the funeral home] I have to suppress my normal being because normally I’m pretty happy and easy-going and tend to want to laugh.”

– Rick

3.  “…When you go to a traditional funeral it’s just about death and death is depressing and sad and it’s just about broken relationships and there is just nothing positive about it.”

– Anonymous

4.  “It separates you from the outside like a coffin. You are enclosed.”

– Lee

5. “When I go to a funeral, I feel like I’m alone. It’s not a group. You’re just there as an individual to say goodbye to this person… You’re not there to reminisce. You’re just there to say goodbye. It’s depressing and lonely.”

– Rick

6. “They’re cold. Kind of intimidating. It’s pretty formal… sometimes not real inviting. Like art museums or galleries.”

– Marilyn

7. “Traditional services are almost a lecture of sorts. Some people who preside over death ceremonies don’t allow for any release of sorrow. In fact, the ceremony itself makes participants more sorrowful. It’s almost like we were being forced to feel sorrowful instead of being able to celebrate. I almost think of traditional funerals as puppetry with someone in control manipulating the people in attendance to act the way they feel is appropriate.”

– Becky

8.  “There is so much that has happened in a person’s life that you don’t really get to know and express during traditional [services]. There’s so many things that in a traditional funeral get overlooked. You don’t get a chance to see the total person.”

– Anonymous

9. “Nobody wants to go to a funeral. They’d rather be at Starbucks. I think funerals in my early life were kind of fearful. I think just being in the room with lots of people crying, that was very uneasy for me, even as a little child. It’s an emotionally charged time.”

– Marilyn

10. “The non-traditional that I have experienced tend to get you balanced, taken away from that sad, pensive state. I don’t know many traditional funerals that do that as well as the non-traditional. They quite often just leave you sad at the end like you were in the middle.”

– John

What did you think?

These quotes are pretty negative in regards to funeral services, aren’t they?  They’re not meant be “doom and gloom,” but rather open your eyes and get you thinking about how you can improve your services to better meet Baby Boomers’ needs.

Take a moment to read a positive quote to help you see exactly why Baby Boomers are looking for a celebration of life: “ I want plenty of dancing and laughing and having a great time [at my funeral]. When we left [my friend’s funeral] everybody was laughing and talking abou the person because we saw all the happy moments on DVD, the person moving around alive. When we went to the party afterwards, everybody was in a festive mood. We were talking about the person like they were still existing. We didn’t grieve her life. We celebrated her life. I didn’t leave heartbroken. [My heart] was sliced, but it wasn’t broken. When I walked away from there, I thought they were sort of still with me. I [was] basking in her achievements and her friendship and what she meant.”

– Arlene

So what did you think about these quotes? What can we do as a profession to make our services valuable?