OneRoom Blog

Highland Park Funeral Centre offers funeral services at both their Funeral Home and various country chapels and churches in the area. While they have been using OneRoom’s fixed cameras in their Funeral Home for some time, they were missing an option for families requesting recording and streaming of funerals at off-site locations.

“No news is good news” “Silence is golden” We have all heard these common sayings - but what if those statements are not always true when it comes to business and understanding our customer’s needs?

“No one wants to plan their own funeral,” says James Montgomery, OneRoom’s national sales director, in a recent interview. His frank admission is based on nearly 15 years of industry experience, including a decade-plus tenure at Service Corporation International. “You’re essentially planning the worst day of your life, so it's easy for someone to put off,” he continues. As funeral professionals, you recognize this hesitancy better than anyone.

For many professionals who have selected to delve into the world of the funeral director, it is more than just a career path but a calling. I have been a licensed funeral director for over 20 years in New York and more recently in Texas. I have served client families in different roles throughout my career ranging from daily operations, embalming, leading teams in pre need sales, managing cemeteries and crematories as well as presenting to other professionals at events.

Background

Background

Funeral directors must organize an event that does justice to a person’s life, while also bringing mourners together under highly emotional circumstances. This can be a demanding and delicate task, but when done well, funeral directors create a unique and personal blend of sorrow and joy, reflection and hope, strength, and meaning.

The grieving process is never easy. But that’s why families and loved ones come together to honor the person who has passed and help one another through a challenging time.

How to respond to a global pandemic is a skill all governments, businesses and families have had to polish up on in recent months. Compassionate funeral directors looking to deepen relationships and build empathy with clients can do so by livestreaming the funeral, which allows all attendees, physical and virtual, to partake in the healing process.

When Candida Rifkind got the call on March 14 that her Aunt Cecilia had died, she realized she couldn’t attend the funeral. The rapid spread of the coronavirus was making international travel more uncertain than ever. Just a day earlier, the United States had blocked most European visitors from entering its borders. Ms. Rifkind, an English professor who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, didn’t want to risk it. (Canada and the United States closed their borders to each other the next week.)

Grace Druien is “kind of a professional funeral-thrower.”

Thanks to the social networks, the world is smaller.Thanks to the social networks, we are able to socialise our own grief with loved ones, as one.

Since the mid-20th century, TV has been a staple source of entertainment and news in households around the world – from Saturday night movies for the kids, to dad telling everyone to hush while he catches the weather report.