COVID-19 has Transformed Customer Attitudes in the United Kingdom

Nathan Martin
Okay, guys, are we happy to make a start do you think? Yeah. Okay. So welcome along, everybody. This is the Next Gen Webinar, our first webinar for a long time, actually. So I’d like to welcome everybody, all the next Gen members and to extend that welcome to all full, SAIF members that have joined us today. I appreciate everybody is extremely busy at the moment. So I really appreciate you taking your time to join us on this webinar. So for those that don’t know, I’m Nathan. I’m part of the leadership team at NextGen. I’m today joined by Chris Cruger, Scott Story and Jenny. I will now hand over to Scott, who will introduce the rest of the webinar. Thank you again.

Scott Storey
Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to today’s Webinar. Covid-19 has transformed customer attitudes. How can the Death Care Profession adjust? We’re very excited to share insights and findings from the Foresight Company’s Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior study. We appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. As Nathan said, my name is Scott Storey and I’m responsible for OpusXenta in the UK. And I’ll be your moderator for today’s Webinar. But before we get started, I do have a few housekeeping notes. To eliminate background noise all participants have been muted and you’ll only be able to hear the presenters speak. And after our presentation, we will have time for Q and A session. So if you’d like to send us a question, please do so anytime using the Q and A or Chat feature in the Zoom dashboard on the bottom of your screen. We’ll do our best to answer any of your questions by the end of the program today. But because we have a limited amount of time, if we don’t, we apologize in advance. We will be sure to follow up any of those unanswered programs when we share the content of this webinar.

Scott Storey
And finally, we’re recording today’s Webinar and we’ll be sharing the copy along with the presentation slides. So from here on in, I’d like to hand over to Chris Cruger, who’s now going to take us through the information from his study. Chris.

Chris Cruger
Thank you. Scott, let me share my screen with you here for a moment. Tell me if I’ve done that correctly. Thumbs up, Scott. Can you see that properly? Excellent. Thank you very much, Scott. Nathan, it’s a pleasure to be with you all today. Again, my name is Chris Cruger ,I am the CEO of the Foresight Companies. We are a consulting company focused on the funeral and cemetery profession. We are about a 40 year old company. Our management team collectively has been in this profession for going on 200 years. So what I’m going to talk to you today about is a little bit about the evolution of the death care profession and what we’re seeing with consumer preferences. So first, I’m going to talk a little bit about the pandemic in review, and then I’m going to talk a little bit specifically, which I think to this group might be of considerable interest is our consumer behavior study. We have done three such studies for three years in a row. We’re actually in the process of finalizing our 2022 study, but we’ve done an extensive study on consumer behaviors and attitudes about our profession. And we’ve really focused on pre during and what we hope is a postcovid environment for our professions.

Chris Cruger
We’ve got some really interesting statistics around that that I’ll share. And then the hope is to tie this all together for you as to what this all means for our profession going forward. One point that I do want to make is that the great majority of what I’m going to talk about is focused on the US consumer market. And so that’s where we did our sampling. But I think we would all agree that consumer behavior is fairly universal. So what is applicable here in the US is also got certain application in the UK. So we’re going to talk a lot about empirical data today.

Chris Cruger
According to an article by the Collective Campus, 88% of all Fortune 500 companies on that list that existed in 1955 are gone. So these are companies that have gone through bankruptcy, mergers, or are still hanging out there, but have fallen from the top 500 list. Fortune 500 list. Now the Fortune 500 list is the 500 largest companies, public and private, in the US. And the reason that I highlight this is if you go back almost 67 years and we look at these companies that were innovators of their time today, what percentage of those do you think actually exist?

Chris Cruger
Of the 500 largest companies in the US that existed in 1950, 512 percent of those exist today. Their mergers, bankruptcies, whatever the case may be, only 12% of those existed today. The common thread for each of these is that they lacked innovation and it resulted in business failure. They failed to innovate and future proof their business, and it ultimately led to their demise. Blockbuster was approached by Netflix. They declined. They filed for bankruptcy. Polaroid didn’t think there was much to this digital picture thing. They filed for bankruptcy, sold off their assets, Toys R US here in the States. They partnered with Amazon. There was ultimately a breach of that contract. They filed for bankruptcy. Pan Am, what was once the Darling of the skies again, an industry innovator of the time, they failed to reinvent themselves, and they failed. The point of all this to make is that these innovators at the time who failed to continue to evolve forward, no longer exist. These are big corporations, big organizations that theoretically had some very intelligent people. My point in sharing this with you is to say that the opportunity to evolve is here for all of us, big and small, and we all have to evolve and innovate in order to succeed.

Chris Cruger
So here are the timeframes that these companies existed. But successful companies all have these factors in common. They have vision, they’ve got resolution to make changes in order to evolve and thrive. These companies have all embraced innovation which is resulting in success of their business. They’re also keep changing and adapting to meet the demands of the rapidly changing world. A couple of these companies on here Southwest, the counterbalance to Pan Am that I mentioned earlier. Amazon. I’m going to touch on Amazon a number of times because we have become a society of convenience. Apple, DoorDash, Google, these are all innovators of doing things entirely different today than others were doing them before. So let me tell you a little bit about the study that we’ve done. This is the third year that we’ve done the study. This is specifically on the second study. So this is on 2021 results. We studied slightly more than 4000 respondents across the US. It took us five days to do this. This was a nine to twelve minute online survey. So we set this out. It took us five days to get a little over 4000 respondents. The minimum criteria was 45 years of age and older.

Chris Cruger
And what this resulted in was a 95% degree of accuracy plus or -2% so what that means is as I go through this information, what I’m going to tell you is empirical fact. So ultimately this is data that we can use as opposed to just my opinion. So going back to let’s start with what did we learn? So what do we learn in last year’s study? In the 2020 study, we saw that the role of the funeral director or the cemetery counselor had to be reimagined. That role, which had traditionally been a face to face and retail type transaction, had to shift. It shifted to more virtual but much more consultative in nature. The ways in which the profession had to serve the consumer was an entirely new way of doing things, at least for most. Probably the most profound findings though were around technology. Technology is at the heart of just about every facet of the findings. Not only were we forced to adapt technology into everything that we do because of the quarantines and other restrictions, we were introducing technology into our profession at a pace never seen before, at least here in the States.

Chris Cruger
I mean, I would equate that we were at least 15 to 20 years behind the times. Since we were forced to implement this in such a really short timeframe, it was really a new way of interacting with us. These weren’t new technologies, but they hadn’t become mainstream in the profession in the past couple of years though we have to confirm that ultimately this new way of doing things, the consumer isn’t going back. The consumer is set at no uncertain terms. They’ve experienced a new way, and they don’t want it the other way. The other primary theme that emerged over the last year or so is the consumers are going to demand transparency and they want convenience. I go back to the Amazon reference from the convenience of your own couch today you can get just about anything. You can get anything delivered. You can get all sorts of information. They want transparency, and they want that level of convenience. And if we don’t give it to them, somebody else will. And that’s one of the things that we have to think about in this profession. I’m going to tell you a lot about statistics, and this doesn’t mean that it’s black and white.

Chris Cruger
But what it means is this is where things are moving. And if we don’t ultimately evolve and meet those needs, they’re going to go somewhere else. So if it’s not you, then who? So if we’re not on the front side of this, we’re going to be on the back side. So that’s a theme that I hope you’ll pick up on as we go through this. But before we take a deep dive into the findings, I want to highlight how consumers have greatly changed their attitudes as it relates to our profession. It’s caused a shift in consumer attitudes at a pace that’s really never been seen before. I do hope that we’re going to look back at this at some point in time, and it’ll be a distant memory, whether this is going to be a thing in the past. We’ll see. But I’ll tell you that the consumer’s attitudes and the way that they want to interact with us has not changed. So hopefully this will be one of those pre and post-covid timestamps going forward. Now, it’s no great surprise as we look backwards, but consumers rethought their attitudes about the funeral and cemetery profession.

Chris Cruger
So again, going to that profession that’s traditionally been 15 to 20 years behind the times and all very steeped in tradition, the pandemic forced us all to become somewhat more current with technology and to adapt to new ways of doing things. I mean, the clear winners, for sure, were those who embraced technology attitudes, those who simply adapted to the environment. Now, there’s no rocket science to it, but it was all just about being adaptable. One of the more accomplished folks in this profession, a mentor of mine, once shared with me some very simple advice that he received early in his career. And it’s listen to what the consumer wants and give them a double portion of it, listen to what they don’t want, and don’t push it on. It’s really pretty simple, right? And they’re sound words to live by. But if we don’t listen to the consumer and we don’t know what they’re telling us, somebody else is going to and they’re going to meet the needs of those consumers going forward. So more so now than ever, if it’s not you, then who? In a study performed by the Ketchum Group, excuse me, 28% of all consumers said they had made a permanent change to their brand preferences and brand loyalty as a result of the pandemic.

Chris Cruger
So 28%. 3 in 10 changed their brand loyalty as a result of the pandemic. Whether that be Coke to Pepsi or Ford to Chevy, at the end of the day, they made a shift and it was a result of the Pandemic. So now one of the things that I often hear in this profession is, well, not my families, right? My families wouldn’t do that. That’s my community. They’re not going anywhere. Well, one of the questions that I’ll ask you to ponder for a moment is what do you think the impact was on people’s preferences around funeral home and cemetery preferences and their brand loyalty as a result of the pandemic? Higher or lower than 28%? I guess I kind of set that one up a little bit. This is an interesting graph from a study from the University of Pennsylvania. It’s the Wharton Baker Consumer Loyalty study, and the study clearly shows the types of things that are driving consumers away from your business. So first and foremost, no great surprise here, but we’re looking at physical plan, the store, the facility. If it’s not up to standard, people are put off by. But the second most prominent reason is the website is difficult to navigate.

Chris Cruger
So I want you to think about that. 75% of consumers that have been driven away is because the website was difficult to navigate. I’ll touch on that again, but you look at the other things here, it essentially says he didn’t appreciate my business, messy, disorganized didn’t treat me with respect. Effectively you’re just telling the consumer that they’re really not important to you. The reality is that we don’t listen to that consumer and we do what we want to do or what we think they should do, we’re sending the consumers the wrong message. We’re just driving them away. Each and every aspect in the way that we conduct our business impacts our customer loyalty going forward. It’s not about what you did for me before unfortunately today, it’s not as much about our goodwill that we may have had with these families in the past. We have to continue to meet those needs and the evolving needs of the younger generation that is making some of these decisions. I’m going to talk about some statistics in a little bit that shows you that the older populations are changing just as quickly. Now. Remember when I asked you about how the consumer looks at us, some of you were saying, probably not my families.

Chris Cruger
Well, this slide clearly shows the consumer’s attitudes have changed even more profoundly about us and their brand loyalty. Now we looked at a slightly older population and we have a slightly different demographic that we’re looking at here. But just as significant as the overall percentage here is, if you look at that last column. So the fact that 32% of consumers have changed their brand loyalty about us through the pandemic, that last column there, that’s 21%, 75 years of age and older. One year ago that was 12%. That number increased 75% in the last twelve months. So the older demographic, the older population, the people that we may or may not be appealing to right now in their decision making, these people are changing at a pace faster than anybody else. Makes you think we really have to focus in and understand what those needs are. And again, it’s not black and white, but it shows you where that preference and where the trends are heading. So without further ado, let me look a little bit at some of what the consumers are telling us. And again, what I’m going to tell you, this is fact. This is empirical data.

Chris Cruger
These aren’t my opinions. When I do interject some opinions, I’ll let you know. But this is what the consumer is telling us. So how many of you out there for one reason or another, send a family away for one reason or another? You just simply couldn’t serve that family? Perhaps what seemed like a very high class problem at the time, turning away business because you’re just too busy, it’ll haunt you for some time to come. Now, if it was a cemetery, I’m not sure that we have any cemeterians in this group here, but it’s almost 30%. If you had to turn somebody away or you push them off too far, the consumer is saying that 30% of those people aren’t coming back for any reason whatsoever. On the funeral side, if you were turning families away for one reason or the other, again, one in five, almost one in 5, 18 percent are saying they’re not coming back. Now, I would suggest to you that just as easy as it was to lose that consumer, so to speak, it’ll be just as easy to win that consumer back if you simply just listen to what the consumer is telling you, because unfortunately, the bar isn’t too high right now because great many of us are not listening to the consumer.

Chris Cruger
So if you simply adapt your way of doing things, I think you’ll be able to win these people back going forward. The consumer does not feel like we’re meeting their needs. They don’t feel like we’re meeting their needs or meeting their budget. Now, there’s a couple of different things that we can get from this slide. First and foremost, the perception that the consumer has of us as individuals is much higher than us as the collective. Right. So us as a profession, they feel one way about us, but they feel a little bit better and they feel more favorable once they get to know us. No great surprise there. Right. So that’s the good news. But the point of this slide that I really want you to focus on is that each and every one of these arrows, which is pointing downward is what the change has been year over year. So the point that I’m trying to make here is that the consumer doesn’t think they were meeting their needs, doesn’t think they were meeting their budget. Again, I’m not as concerned about the budget as I am their needs and the decline in what the perception is of our services.

Chris Cruger
Now, this is not overly surprising with the challenges that we’re facing with staffing, with supply chain. There are challenges that we’re all facing in that consumer experience. But as we think about this as a profession, going forward in meeting those needs, to me, this is just a cry for help that we need to make sure that we use our two ears and two eyes a lot more than using our mouth and listen to what the consumer is telling us. Celebrations are Important. The good news is that 63% of all consumers still feel that having a celebration, a big celebration is important. Yet nearly half or 49% of those consumers are planning to have that celebration outside the funeral home. So the good news is they want something, they want to celebrate, but they don’t want to do it with us. Again, this is a big issue here in the States. One half of all consumers are looking to have that celebration elsewhere. So what does that mean? It means that we had better adjust our pricing. We better do it right. We also means that we either better make a determination, do you want to try to fight the consumer or do you want to work with the consumer?

Chris Cruger
So do we want to participate or do we want to fight it again? So the real issue here is listening to where the consumer is taking us. The question was, have you in the last twelve months experienced the death of a friend or a loved one? Now we have a slightly higher demographic. In general, we serve 45 years of age and older. But the perception was that 43% of all respondents said that they had experienced the loss. The question wasn’t covid specific, but 75% of those people described that experience as they didn’t get to say goodbye. Well, 66% described that experience as they couldn’t see the loved one. Now these are awfully high numbers. We’re talking about 43% of the population. These are 43% of the population who have experienced grief in the last twelve months. And you get three quarters of them saying that they didn’t get to say goodbye and two thirds saying they didn’t get to see the loved one. So ultimately, what does this mean? So you have a huge population out there. I’m going to touch on this in a second when we talk about pre-need, but you’ve got a population that’s grieving and they’re actually looking for interaction with you, the professional to help them through that grief and potentially and probably pre plan going forward.

Chris Cruger
All right, so here’s one of those areas or opportunities. We just discussed how 43% of the respondents said that they had experienced the loss and the 75% had described they didn’t get to say goodbye while 66% didn’t get to see their loved one. Now these might feel a little bit difficult to digest, but what we do see is that the consumers were denied the proper and traditional send off. Now one of the things that blows me away, for a profession that we are, let’s just say behind the times and struggling to get current, every single one of us, I’m sure within arms length right now has one of these things. Everybody’s got their phones right here. And different ways of reaching people in different ways of communicating is the statistic here. 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes. Three minutes. So we think about how do we communicate with a client these days. And there’s different mediums. I’m not endorsing text messaging versus instant messaging, any of these things versus in person. I’m just simply suggesting an alternative way to connect. We have several people or several organizations here in the US that are after care and lead generators that are almost exclusively on the platform of text messaging.

Chris Cruger
I have a friend of mine who has six memory care facilities in Kansas City, Missouri, here in the States, and this gentleman, they’re putting people into his facilities, there is no insurance pay. They’re going to pay upwards of a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year for their loved one to be in their care for some period of about one to two years. 98% of all of his communication right now with all intakes prior to the actual intake takes place over text message. Again, I’m not endorsing. I’m simply suggesting there are alternative methods and we in our profession, in order to meet the needs of the consumer, have to communicate with the consumer on their terms as well. Death is never convenient. While some would relate convenience with price, this is telling us something profoundly different. 21% of all consumers are willing to pay more if you simply make it easier on them. Provide me with information online, give me the terms, let me do this. Give me a smooth customer experience and 21% of the consumers are willing to pay for it. I’m one of those consumers. I don’t want to go in and waste two or three or four or 5 hours of my time if I know what I want.

Chris Cruger
I appreciate what everybody’s trying to do, but I want some convenience. I’m willing to pay for it. Now we’re going to take a few deep dives into three core areas, technology, convenience and pre-need and see what the consumer is telling us and how it’s going to drive in the future. Now, first I’m going to dig into technology that remains at the heart of pretty much everything that the consumer is telling us today. From the very beginning, from the marketing side all the way to the aftercare. Now the pandemic has brought a surge in the adoption of internet based services to communicate, to interact, and to stay connected across society. And it really does span all ages and incomes and demographics. Things that were relatively unheard of have become commonplace. Telemedicine experienced over a 700% increase. People you’d never expect doing things like this are doing it regularly. My parents, my parents in their 80s, I’m telling you, my father uses his computer for solitaire, ebay and email and not necessarily in that order. But my father is having telemedicine appointments. This has just become a different way of doing things. What was once counterculture is now mainstream.

Chris Cruger
Almost half of all consumers believe that they can show how much they care by simply attending the live streaming of an event and signing a digital register book. So almost half of consumers are telling us now that if they live stream a funeral, they’ve paid their respects. So when half of the consumers don’t feel it’s as important to attend a service in person, how does that affect the size of our buildings going forward? How does that affect where we’re going to spend our money as we reinvest in ourselves, ourselves, meaning our people as well as our businesses going forward? Now, the key point on this also to make is that is almost 100% increase year over year. Prior to COVID, 25% or less of consumers were expecting live streaming. And now and then if they were, they were probably willing to pay for it. Today, almost 50%, 44% of all consumers are expecting live streaming to be a part of the offering. So they’re expecting it, but here’s the scary thing, 79% who are actually expecting it aren’t willing to pay for it. So this had better be included in your offerings and you also better make sure that it’s priced, that you’re priced appropriately.

Chris Cruger
Because here’s the thing. When you got almost half of the population out there, half of your consumers that walk in the door and this is what they expect and you don’t provide it for them, right out of the gates one out of two, you’re already disappointing them. So again, this is what the consumer is looking for. It’s not everybody, but almost half of the population is looking for it these days. So what is the right behaviors for an environment that is changing so quickly? You got to integrate technology into the complete offering of your business. And that means from the marketing to the arrangement and through the service and into the aftercare. I mean, we have some providers here that actually do that for you. You have to hire and train the right people and the right employees. You need to give the team the proper training to develop the skills and support the customers demand. These are not nice to have items anymore, folks. These are must haves. These are the minimal expectations of the consumer going forward. More than anything, this demonstrates the consumer’s attitudes around the demands. They’re just not going away.

Chris Cruger
Now, in that world of instant gratification, demands around convenience continue to get more and more. It’s no different in other industries like it is in ours. It’s just becoming much more relevant and much more urgent than ours right now.

Chris Cruger
Shoppers have been conditioned as a result of the pandemic. Almost anything, I mentioned this earlier, but anything that you want, anything you need, you can get from the comfort of your own couch. The convenience thing is hitting in every sort of space. Year over year, the grocery industry here in the US increased by a little over $2.1 billion. Now, I would suggest to you we don’t have a statistic around it, but in the US, that number was probably higher for the funeral profession simply because the number was darn near zero before. So we were ultimately forced into DocuSign and all the other things that we all did and so we were forced to conduct business online that we never did before. Now, remember, 21% of the consumers are willing to pay for convenience and a great many more just expect it. Well, 15% of all consumers expect a house call. So 15% of the consumers today are asking us to come to them, whether that be on the funeral side for a pre-arrangement or for an at need. Now, 15% of the population on its own is not overly of note. I mean, it’s a relevant percentage.

Chris Cruger
But when coupled with the fact that 41% are actually looking to make their arrangements virtually. So right now, that makes north of 50% of consumers are telling us that they prefer not to make arrangements in the funeral home. So pre-covid, very few of any arrangements, at least here in the US and presentations were being made virtually. One year ago, 46% of consumers actually said that they would choose to make that arrangement virtually, it’s gone down slightly. If you remember, twelve months ago, we’re right in the height of COVID so that was about the only way of doing things. But the point is, even in that scenario, we haven’t retreated that much. So when you look at 15% looking for a house call and 41% looking to make arrangements virtually, we’d better be looking at ways to make this seamless because you got 56% of the people who don’t want to come to us to make that arrangement. And oh, by the way, when 56% don’t want to come to us for the arrangement and 49% right out of the gates don’t want to use us for the celebration, we better be looking for new ways to engage that consumer because they’re not coming in the door the way that they historically and traditionally have done so.

Chris Cruger
So this is where it is absolutely critical for us to be, again, engaging that consumer in new ways. You remember that slide at the beginning of the presentation where the second most popular reason that you’re driving consumers away from your business was that your website is difficult to navigate. 75% of consumers said that the behavior driving them away from your business was that your website was difficult to navigate. Well, 74% of all consumers expect to be able to find pricing online, and almost half will not do business with you if you don’t make it easier for them. And if you don’t provide them that level of transparency. Two thirds of consumers are expecting to see our products online. In our profession, that means that you have one chance to create that value proposition for the consumer when they go to your website. This means that each of these two things working against you. If you’re not showing your pricing online, you’re not communicating a clear message. You’re not going to get that first call. The way that we touch the consumer is different. The traditional goodwill is a little bit different than it was before.

Chris Cruger
Probably the most alarming statistic of them all is that 47% of all consumers say they will only do business with companies that provide greater convenience and transparency. So what does that mean in our world? It means they want to be able to have some sort of a clear idea on what pricing is, what the value proposition, and they want to do this on their terms. Now, 47% said that to the extent that another option exists, they will go elsewhere. So again, this is where the statistics stand alone. If half of the people are telling you that if you don’t provide them pricing, if you don’t make this transparent, that they’re going to go somewhere else. So even if you don’t believe the empirical data behind this and let’s just say it’s only half of that number, what would happen to each and every one of the businesses you all work in? If 10, 15, 20% of your call volume just simply went up in smoke and went down the street to the next guy. You think it’s 15, 20, 30% of your cash flow? It’s far worse than that. Right. And this comes back to if not you, then who?

Chris Cruger
And I would suggest you, when it comes to the consumer looking for pricing, they’re not looking for your itemized price list. They’re looking to understand the value proposition. Am I talking about 100 or 1000 or $10,000? They want to understand what they’re going to get in this value proposition because, let’s face it, most consumers do not have intimate relationship or intimate interactions with our services much more than two and a half times in their entire life. So ultimately, the power dynamic of us shepherding the client through this process is quite significant. Now, when you think about convenience, think about the consumer. What makes the consumers’ lives easier? Well, we are all wonderful people and anyone would be lucky to have our undivided attention for several hours. That’s not exactly what the consumer seems to have in mind these days. They’re looking for a different interaction. They want a clean, easy to use experience. They want to be able to interact with you on your website. They want to make it easy. They want to make it educational. Don’t make the client have to work in order to do business with you. Hire the right people, surround yourself with the right people and support them and listen to what the consumer is telling and share that with your colleagues.

Chris Cruger
There’s a desperate need for information share in our profession and the more that you can do so it is certainly going to pay huge dividends. As we discussed earlier, the pandemic has caused people to evaluate their own mortality in ways like never before. All you have to do is read some of the industry blogs here in the States. Look at some of the public company reports, the quarterly reports, the annual reports are all out. The new ways of doing things, new ways of interacting with consumers, certainly on the pre-need side, are off the charts. And the demand for pre-need services has also increased at a radical level. 75% of all consumers have a desire to pre-plan their funeral arrangements and make their cemetery arrangements. Now prepandemic, that number was 58%. The demand for prearrangement service has increased over 30% year over year, and that number is even significantly higher when you look at certain demographics; African American, Jewish, Catholic demographics. The other one is remember that 42% that said that they experienced the death of a friend or a loved one. The ones who didn’t get to say goodbye didn’t get to see their loved.

Chris Cruger
80 percent of those people are looking to prearrange their services. So the people that have had that intimate interaction with the loss of somebody, no great surprise. But those people in particular are more inclined to pre plan, on top of which they’re willing to spend more. So among the many other eye opening experiences or things that we learned is that ultimately the consumers’ willingness and propensity of pre plan for a variety of reasons has increased dramatically. And as I say, we tend to look at the consolidators as well as some of the association information that comes out. And straight across the board, here in the US, we have seen pre planning really just take off. But with that also, now more than ever, the consumers that are relying on technology, the Zoom, the video chats, FaceTime that have become more common communication met.Hods both personally and professionally and increased use in technology, it’s really now flowed over into funeral service. And it’s not going to leave. The technology trends that we’re seeing include video chat arrangements, live streaming of services, websites for products, pricing. Picture this scenario. We now know that video chats are an acceptable way of planning arrangements, at least here anyway.

Chris Cruger
And that means that there’s the possibilities that you, as a funeral director, may never actually have a physical interaction with that family. I mean, do you treat that virtual interaction differently if you’re using this technology? Is there different ways of are you communicating fairly and clearly with the consumer? Each interaction that you have with clients is going to have to be the same, whether it’s in person, whether it’s virtual. And that’s a challenge that we all have to take into consideration when we’re training people as we’re developing our new ways of doing things. These are real challenges that face our profession going forward. Simplest form, if you haven’t already embraced it, I know it’s a little bit of a different practice over in the UK, but if pre planning is a critical part of what we’re doing over here. All right, now that we’ve gone over our 2021 findings and insights, we’ve dived into some of the new trends and behaviors we’re seeing. I want to touch a little bit on who won. So who won through the pandemic. It’s an unfortunate reality, but as a profession, there were some very positive things that have come out of covid.

Chris Cruger
I wouldn’t say that we’re out of the woods yet, but the warnings are there. And this is one of the things that to continue to drive home that point that the consumer is evolving and doing so faster now than ever before. But 67% of consumers say that their attitudes have changed, simply by experiencing that new way of doing things. And you can think back about that slide that I mentioned earlier of the 75 plus demographic that changed 75% over the last year. So their brand loyalty or their loyalty in our profession shifted. People are experiencing new things, and there’s new ways of doing things. It doesn’t mean our old ways are no longer relevant. It just simply means that we need to be embracing those new things as well. Because the reality is you are that trusted adviser that bridges the perception and the reality. Right? So there’s the reality of who we are today, and there’s the perception of where the consumer wants us to be. And this is where you all as the profession, and certainly those who are the more visionary and the progressive in this profession are the ones that fill that gap.

Chris Cruger
So again, likewise, whether there were winners. I know it sounds insensitive to look back on Covid and think that there were really any winners coming out of this. But on the professional side, there clearly were. It’s difficult to say, but for all the reasons we just highlighted, about the losers out there, there’s some pretty big winners as well. So at this time, more so now than ever before, the winner’s success came squarely at the expense of the losers. And it was in huge shifts. The disparity between the winners and losers was far greater now than I think at any other point in history, at least in our profession. So who won. Last responders? You all the profession do the hard work of each of your associations, each and every one of you. Funeral profession, at least here in the States, really got elevated and got the recognition and got seen in the light that has been far overdue. So it’s been a very refreshing it’s been nice to see the recognition from the communities as well as the public at large. Technology, firms that already embraced technology going into Covid, chances are they were far ahead of the curve.

Chris Cruger
However, firms that were willing to adapt and do so with relative speed, they’ve succeeded plain and simple. Customer experience, this continues to be at the core of the findings. Those who adapt to what the consumer is looking for, they win. Firms that focus on the solution and not the problems. Right. It’s really easy for anybody to focus on the excuses and reasons why we can’t do things. And that’s when you look back on Covid, at least again, relative, it was in different jurisdictions here in the States where it was a little bit different. But those who figured out how do we do this as opposed to all the reasons why we can’t, they won. Pre need. I just touched on pre need straight across the board. Those who focused on pre need, it was a great opportunity if you didn’t I suggest that you do. But anyway, I want to focus something and we were talking earlier, I think Nathan, Scott and I were talking about the different dynamics between the North American funeral market and that of the UK. And I’m showing this slide here because it represents what is effectively some of the larger consolidators here in the US.

Chris Cruger
Consolidators in the US make up about 25% of the funeral market of the funeral profession. So it is a very good barometer as to what’s going on within case volume, revenues, averages, cremation mixes. So long story short, year over year, SCI revenues were up almost 10%, profits almost 30, and the value of the business almost 30%. StoneMor, another big consolidator, about 400 locations here in the US, the value of their business went up 170%, carriage services, a little smaller funeral operator they’ve got about 300 locations, revenue is up 20%, profits up 33, value of the business went up 125%. I simply show these as directional to show where the profession as a whole, at least here in North America, I’ve shown kind of where the direction of things are going now. The reality of it is that a lot of this goodness and the positives and the opportunity in this profession that we’re all seeing are coming squarely at the expense of those who are less progressive. We here in the States in particular, again, a little bit more competitive dynamic, but we have upwards of 17 to 19,000 funeral homes. We have certain States where the average number of calls per funeral home is less than 50.

Chris Cruger
So there is a very high saturation point. So unfortunately, there’s a lot of people in that side of things that are not experiencing the same growth and opportunity. But one of the biggest key findings we have discovered through these studies and these studies that we’ve done over the years is that the pandemic has significantly and permanently altered the behavior and choices the consumers are making. These changes don’t mean it’s the end. It simply means it’s time to adjust. I don’t believe there’s ever been a better opportunity to be in this profession than right now if you’re willing to be a little bit more progressive and willing to do things a little bit differently. But the three most profound findings that we really have coming out of these studies, and we’ve done it now three years in a row, and it just keeps getting reinforced and reinforced. Is it’s around technology, physical attendance and price transparency? The consumer has been very clear about what they expect and what they want from us. Communication and transparency is key. Communication skills are absolutely crucial in any industry, but particularly in ours, particularly as we start getting more and more towards technology.

Chris Cruger
We’re dealing with families in an extremely vulnerable and often not in the right frame of mind. We have to be that guiding light or that main voice to aid them in their planning process. From that first call really to the moment they leave the funeral home. We have to communicate all the necessary information to our families clearly, completely and honestly. If we communicate properly with the clients in the outside world, any breaches of ethics going forward or this lack of dissatisfaction from the consumer will be far less. Rethink your staffing plan. We all know the saying, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m not suggesting in a million years that that means that we have to throw people or get people out of the way. When we’re talking about our profession going forward and our staffing, we have to augment our staffing. When we have these new needs of the consumer, how do we change our way of doing things or ultimately support our staff and train our staff to get them up to that level to meet those needs of the consumer? Because the other thing is it’s not fair for any one of us to be put in front of us to put in a situation that we’re unprepared for.

Chris Cruger
And that’s one of the challenges as we look at our staffing and balance what this new environment, new way of interacting with the consumer is it’s a different makeup of what our teams are going to look like, and we have to be open to that and frankly, adjust as we go. The facilities of the future, they’re different. Again, I know that the footprint is a little bit different in the UK than it is necessarily in the States or even on the continent. But when we start to look at consumers who upwards of 50% are going to live stream services and they feel that that’s paying their respects. And you got 56% of the people who aren’t looking to come into our facilities to make arrangements, it starts to reshape the facilities that we need. It starts to reshape the way that we spend money and where we invest in ourselves going forward. But the key to all this is continue to monitor and adapt. Right? We’ve just gone through, give or take 30 months of some very profound change, and there’s still a lot of we’ve got a lot of factors impacting our lives, particularly over there these days.

Chris Cruger
You have to monitor things. When we look at pricing, we look at different types of technology, different ways of interacting with the consumer, try new things. If it doesn’t work, try something different. But the key is being able to adapt. And the quicker you’re able to adapt, you won’t get left behind on these trends, but you also have to be willing to listen and see what the consumer is telling us. So in summation here when we look back at all on all of the data points for the past couple of years, one thing that we know for certain is that the role of both the funeral professional and the cemetery counselor has changed and reimagined completely. And we know that these reimagined roles aren’t going to go back to the way they were before. So I think it’s an exciting time in this profession. Again, as I say, I think I hope there’s some nuggets out of what we have just shared here. I think when we’re talking about consumer behavior and consumer attitudes, those are fairly transferable. So with that one point that I would also like to make, I’m going to share with Jenny. I have a PDF of not only this presentation, but also a full form report that gives all of the background, as well as expands on several aspects of our study and a couple of white papers that we’ve done.

Chris Cruger
So we’ll get all of that to Jenny. So if anybody has any questions or wants any of that materials, we’ll make sure that we have those available. So with that, I will try to stop my share and open this up and turn this back over to you. There we go.

Scott Storey
Thanks, Chris. Hopefully you can see that everything that you have just heard from Chris really quite clearly demonstrates that the modern consumer is looking for a different level of service, looking for a different way of engaging with the sector as a whole. Couple of key questions for me. What do you think is an emerging skill set now for a modern funeral director?

Chris Cruger
Well, I think familiarity with technology is a key, but I don’t think that’s really the only element here that’s any different than the aspects of what the traditional funeral director is right. It’s caring, compassionate individual there to serve their community. But one of the keys is that ability now to integrate technology into that. Now, let’s face it, my 15 year old is far better on his iPad than I am with anything. That’s a natural part of it. But I don’t think the qualities of the individual and the hearts that will come into our profession is all that different today than it was before.

Scott Storey
So we’ve seen a lot of change here in terms of move to electronic documentation. That move from manual documentation to electronic documentation has been a real benefit and advantage to how funeral directors can operate, how they can deliver their services. It was suggested, I think, not to long ago that they were going to bring back all known paperwork, which hopefully has now stopped. But these are the things, these are trends that found new ways of working. And there are actually some really good things that have come out of the last 24 months. And we’re now starting to see people looking for new ways to actually work, new ways to engage with cemeteries and crematoria, public and private. We’re seeing people engaging with us. And actually what they want to have is a large screen sharing the services and actually, rather than, I guess the original owner of the business and a lot of these are family run businesses. It’s younger generation now that they’re asking to have their input in terms of what should their business look like moving forward. She’s really interested to see really encouraging. Nathan, what are your thoughts?

Nathan Martin
I agree. And if you don’t mind me just opening up the Q and I only got a few minutes left, but I would like to open the Q and A to all of our members if that’s okay with you, Chris. If anybody has any questions, please do for us. Can we unmute everybody now? Or if you can drop some messages in the chat. If you’ve got any questions, please. No questions at all. Okay. That means you’ve done a great job explaining it all then, Chris!

Chris Cruger
Okay. Everybody’s still snoozing waiting for the alarm clock to wake up. It’s okay.

Nathan Martin
Well, that’s great. Thank you. Has anybody got anything to add before we bring the meeting to a close?

Scott Storey
No. The only thing I would say is obviously we’re recording today’s webinar. We will be sharing that with you, so that will be available. And obviously, if you have any other questions you think of, please, Nathan, for yourself and for SAIF, please reach out to us, Nathan or me and we’ll get some answers back for you. So once again, thank you for joining us.

Nathan Martin
Yes, absolutely. All members, you should have the direct email address for NextGen if you want to contact Claire as well. She can pass anything on to me. Once Jenny has received all the documents from Chris, anybody that’s interested, drop me a line and I’ll get that out to you. Similarly with recording as well. So just on behalf of NextGen SAIF I’d like to thank Chris Scott and Jenny for everything they’ve done today. Thank you very much. It’s been a real insight to everything so thank you.

Chris Cruger
Nathan thank you for the opportunity. Scott likewise, OpusXenta it’s really been a pleasure and you all have a wonderful afternoon.

Nathan Martin
Thanks for joining us today as well. It’s great to have you with us. Thank you.

Chris Cruger
Thank you all.

Scott Storey
Okay.

Nathan Martin
Thanks everyone. You take care. Thank you. Bye.