As I travel throughout North America presenting workshops on death and grief. I have the honor of meeting funeral directors. I am often impressed by their commitment to families and the creation of personalized meaningful experiences. To share their inspiring stories with you, I offer this ongoing series of interviews with funeral directors whom I believe can help educate everyone connected to funeral service about the importance of striving for excellence in serving grieving families. The following interview is with Rick Allnutt, who owns and operates Allnutt Funeral Service in Northern Colorado.
How Did You Get Started In Funeral Service?
I was working as a hunting guide near Cody, Wyoming after college and needed work to get me through the winter. I thought I’d go to work for my dad and uncle’s funeral homes and then return to Cody each season to pursue a career as in outfitter. Once I got into the business-which was 20 years ago-I never went back to guiding. (But I do return almost every year to Cody to go hunting with some of my old coworkers!) I found that funeral service is very rewarding and much easier on my body than packing horses, shoeing horses and living in the mountains in the toughest of conditions!
What Are Your Current Responsibilities?
As president of the company and chairman of our management team, I oversee our operations manager, chief financial officer, and marketing manager. We spend about half’s day per week reviewing the status of current projects, personnel, finances and potential future projects. The balance of my time is spent traveling Northern Colorado attending funeral services in the communities we serve and participating in public relations events and community boards. My dad still serves on the management team, as well.
When You Think Of Excellence In Funeral Service Customer Service, What Come To Mind?
It is stated directly in our customer service goal in our customer service handbook: “Our goal is to provide quality customer service through the implementation and management of our resources, systems and people, not only to meet the expectations of our current and new customers, but to exceed them. We will do this by focusing on customer service both internally and externally and offering more value for our services than our competitors do.” This comes largely from our ability to personalize services. Having excellent customer service means we listen to the needs of families, we are responsive to their requests and we are friendly, knowledgeable and professional in delivering those services.
What Trends Do You See In Your Service Area And What Are You Doing To Respond To Those Trends?
The trends in Northern Colorado seem to be increasingly limited services for some families and increasingly personalized services for other families. The key is how you maintain facilities, staff and personnel to meet both types of families’ needs and earn a profit in doing so. We have some families that request direct cremation with no services and really don’t even come to the funeral home at all. Then we have the family that desires the use of all our personnel, your facility for several days and all of your automotive equipment. We are fortunate enough to have multiple locations with staff to pull from for the peak times, yet keep staff costs under control when they are not needed. A good bank of quality part-time staff is our best asset when it comes to getting things done.
What Do You Think The Biggest Challenge For Funeral Service Is Today?
I think the biggest challenge for us in our service area is being able to adapt to the extremely fast pace of the changes in our market. We have some large facilities that go underutilized because of consumer preferences. Real estate costs are premium in Colorado, and we must ask ourselves if we are maximizing our assets and getting the best return on our investment. There are plenty of operators in Colorado working in very limited space (some out of their homes), and we have a difficult time explaining our overhead and basic minimum services to families comparing our service fees to these low-cost/low-budget funeral directors. We must continue to be aware of what our costs are in providing services to all families and spreading overhead to them all as they come through our doors. At the same time, we need to be competitive in our fees and watch our costs to produce a fair profit to remain in business. As we enter our 120th year of service in Northern Colorado, our main focus is to remain flexible in all we provide and the way we get things done. I also think that in serving the public, you deal with so many different personalities that you must be an expert at reading people and communicating or you will not be successful at satisfying all the families you serve. If we serve 1,000 families a year, we must have a goal of 100 percent customer satisfaction, and that, as you all know, is quite a challenge!
What Do You Most Enjoy About Funeral Service?
I think for most people in funeral service, the most enjoyable thing we get is the personal gratification from the family well served. The letters and phone calls we receive from families that tell us they were completely satisfied are what we work for. I recently received a lengthy letter from a family that was served by our team in a location, and they mentioned everything we train our staff to do. It’s so nice when the entire team works together to make sure things go right for a family and even nicer when the family recognizes the efforts you all put forth!
What Do You Do For Self Care That Keeps You Renewed As You Serve Families?
Living in Colorado it’s easy to take care of yourself. Just get to the mountains for skiing, golfing, hunting, rafting, hiking, biking, camping, fishing or whatever else comes to mind. I’m a true believer in balancing work and play. I truly love the outdoors, and Colorado is a great place to live for me.
When You Contemplate The Future Of Funeral Service, What Comes To Mind?
I think the future of funeral service lies in creativity and flexibility. We must think way outside the box when it comes to our future. We must consider where locations need to be and what they need to look like. We need to consider who our staff is and how they are used. We must maximize our use of equipment, facilities and staff in a world of rising costs and declining profits. That’s what our management team works on every week for a half a day, and the rest of the time we’re out providing excellent customer service at a reasonable fee. There are plenty of other quality providers doing the same thing in our service area. We all need to be aware that in order to make it into our 121st year, we’ve got to concentrate on providing consistent excellent customer service to each family that asks us to help them through the death of someone dear to them. Pretty basic isn’t it.
Cremation Options is proud to be a family owned and operated company dedicated to providing dignified cremation services at an affordable price. Established in 2002; we are a non-denominational firm providing a variety of Direct Cremation, merchandise, and services to families of all ages, creeds, and ethnic backgrounds.Call us toll free @ 1-877-989-9090.
