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Lori Salberg is back to announce the winners of Performance Tracker‘s 2021 Excellence in Customer Service Awards. Lori explains the criteria and methodology for the selection process for the awards and then announces the Top 5 Firms in the 3 categories. If you are interested in learning more about Performance Tracker, book a demonstration with Lori, just select a time in her calendar that is convenient for you: https://meetings.hubspot.com/lori123
See the complete transcript here:
Robin Heppell:
Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I am joined today by our special guest, Lori Salberg, from J3Tech Solutions. Welcome back, Lori.
Lori Salberg:
Thanks Rob. It’s great to be back. It’s always fun to sit down and chat about all things funeral.
Robin Heppell:
Yes, for sure. And now this is pretty cool, this is the first time that I’m really understanding the Performance Tracker, Excellence in Customer Service Awards. And I know that you and your team have been working hard, making all the tallies and getting the information out there. And I thought, “Hey, why don’t we get you on Funeral X to explain it to the folks of what it is and how these firms are qualifying and winning these awards.” And I’ve had you on before about Performance Tracker, for the folks that may not have heard that, just give a quick little background about Performance Tracker and how it helps the various firms in funeral service.
Lori Salberg:
Yes, thanks. So Performance Tracker is a platform that we like to call our customer experience command center. So it’s a way for funeral homes to really track and measure how well their people are performing in order to see how well their funeral home is performing really. And so generally we look at two things. We look at the family feedback. It’s too simple to say, it’s just a survey, because it’s not. We do send surveys out, but we’re trying to really understand how the family experience was, how they felt about their experience with the funeral home every step of the way.
And then we take their responses and we look at that against their sales. So we’re actually able to pull in contract information from any POS system, or wherever you write your contracts, and we’re able to break down by case type for every call that you have, not only what you’re selling and who’s selling it, but how those people who are selling it are doing in relation to what a family is feeling about their experience, right? So measuring customer experience along with the sales and putting that together really gives you a good picture into how you’re actually performing and where you might need to work on getting better.
Robin Heppell:
Hey, Lori, this just kind of occurred to me then. So this is a little off-topic, but I’m interested, if then as you’re tracking revenues, right? On an average order sale or average funeral value, is there a disconnect of maybe the more they spend, the less satisfied they are? Or do they both go up, maybe the more they spend, the happier they are? Or is there not a relationship there?
Lori Salberg:
Generally, you would think that and generally you would see that, that there is a correlation with people are willing to spend more when the experience is better. Right? But typically you’re also seeing that they spend, and then they report back the experience. And that sometimes you’re seeing that, I was with an organization today looking at some of their results, and I find it always interesting because we’re able to look at how an actual arranger performs in comparison to the overall business. Right? So we ask questions related to all of the touchpoints within the family’s experience or journey with the funeral home. And we can pull out just the funeral arranger, the questions, so how was the arrangement experience? And so that’s very clearly looking at that arranger, right?
And so we’re able to say, so overall, for instance, this family is given us, it’s basically a thousand point scale. I won’t get into the details, but out of a thousand, the organization is not got a 980 score and the arranger got a 950 and they said, “Oh, well, is that just one thing? Is that just an outlier?” And I said, “Well, let’s look at the trend.” And so I looked at the entire year where this particular arranger had served 40 families or so, or that had responded. And we looked back and that seems to be a very big [inaudible 00:04:00]. So this arranger is consistently underperforming, not only all the other arrangers in certain areas, but also under the overall score of the organization. So you take that and you measure it against what is she selling? And you say, “Okay.” So normally there’s a correlation, right? So she’s selling under the average of everybody else as well.
Sometimes you see the opposite though. Sometimes it’s really interesting when you start seeing somebody who’s getting really high marks from families, but they are not selling, or they’re not selling, let’s say really well on cremation cases, but they on the traditional, they’re not getting it out of the park, right? They’re above average on average sale value. So it’s allowing you to actually see there, isn’t necessarily a correlation and don’t make the assumption that there is, look at the numbers and they’ll tell you for each individual, what you really need to be working on.
Robin Heppell:
Even your exploration there really talks about the customer experience command center, right? If all that’s there and then you don’t have to have those questions put up to chance. You can, as you said, just what are the numbers? Right?
Lori Salberg:
Let the data, tell you what to do next. We make it actionable so that you can drive results. That’s really the point of driving performance. Right?
Robin Heppell:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So now with Performance Tracker through, started with Johnson consulting it’s been well over a decade and this is your multi-year awards, right? And it sounds like in talking with you and the team, that the firms that are really invested in this, get quite excited this time of year, right?
Lori Salberg:
Oh, they do. Yes. We typically try to announce. We normally at Johnson consulting have an annual summit and that usually happens in about March and we would bring all of our clients in and then we’d do this very nice award ceremony. We didn’t have that this year. We did a virtual thing last year, just kind of coming out pandemic. We said, “Let’s still take another step back and we’ll probably bring it back next year.” So this year is a little bit different. We’re announcing a little bit later. You said my team is working hard. My team has been working hard at trying to calculate results and just make sure that we’re double, triple checking, because people do. They’ve been calling and especially the firms that have won in the past, we have some firms who are always just right on the edge and they want to know what else do I need to do and how close am I?
And so it’s fun. It’s really exciting to see how excited people get, because what we’re doing is truly saying these are best in class. And basically, we have three categories of winners, where we break up affirms by their call volume. And so if we sent out up to 150 surveys, so assuming you sent us all your contracts up to a 100 family, 50 families were served and that’s one category, anyone from 151 to 300 calls, that’s their call volume or survey sent is the second category. And then any firm with over 300 surveys sent. And so those are three categories.
And in each of those categories, we look at the top 15 as winners. So 15 out of we’re looking at each of those categories over 500 or more, right? So that’s pretty incredible. And there’s a whole scoring system for it and there are qualifiers. They have to be in the system for the whole year, of course. And they have to have at least a 30% return rate on the surveys coming back to us. So it’s not like we’re just looking at a few surveys, we’re looking at a good trend. And then, really there’s a combination scores, but basically, we call it our total value index and it’s their overall performance score based on all of the questions and a couple of other things like net promoter score and value questions. So how much people felt there was value out of the service that they received. So anyway, we calculate all those scores up and then out of a thousand points in our total value index, we rank all of our qualifiers. So if you met all the qualifications to be in, then we have all of our winners, the top 15.
And normally this year’s really interesting. Normally I always say this, this trend and this year is a little bit different, but normally the locations that have the smallest volume, typically have the highest scores and to be a minimum qualifier, you typically have to have the highest of the highest scores, right? And then it trickles down to where those larger locations usually have a smaller score. This year we had our top really five winners, but overall in that category, not only did we gain new clients and have more people jump into the system in that particular size category, but people are just working really hard at, I think, developing their customer experience program and just getting better at serving families because the scoring in that particular category, 151 to 300 calls has just gone up. In fact, it surpassed the smallest grouping this year. And so that was really interesting.
Robin Heppell:
That is, Yes. Because you would think as you’ve mentioned, the smaller firms maybe have a bit more time to spend with them and there’s maybe a bit more of a community connection there. One thing before we get on that I saw, you said that they have to have a minimum of, I think 30% return. If that’s the minimum, what’s the average, just again, out of curiosity for people who are, when you’re sending the surveys out, what’s the average response rate?
Lori Salberg:
Yes. And it’s in all the years that we’ve done performance check, like you said, over a decade, we’ve been at about 40%, 35 to 40% of the overall return rate. So all the families that we sent, we’re able to send surveys to 35 to 40% are returning now. For many years we were only on paper. So that’s literally sending out in snail mail and then that mail coming back to us. In the last couple years we converted half of our clients over to digital. So we’re doing emails and text messages. And we’re just about at that same rate. And when you break that up between what comes in on digital and then goes out to paper, when you put those all together, it’s a little bit higher, just because we’re asking more often and more times, but Yes, that’s about the rate.
So 30% you really have to be in that, at least average, right? Just under an average for getting people to respond and that takes an effort as well. So people should really be proud of themselves when they one qualify. And then two to be in that top 15 it’s pretty nice thing.
Robin Heppell:
Yes. No that’s great. I always joke about when I would be at the grave side with the pouch, with the guest book and cards and there, Lori, there’d been a couple times, I’d have to admit that I took the survey out of there and put in my pocket, if things hadn’t gone well, but this is good, you’re voiding that type of skewing of the data that’s for sure.
Lori Salberg:
Yes. You can really gain the system. We do have people who I think try to leave email addresses out there, but we are on them now. We’ve got managers following up and we’re pushing out information. That’s like, “Hey, we’re missing email addresses and we don’t have this contract.” So we’re really trying to make sure no one can game the system.
Robin Heppell:
Good.
Lori Salberg:
Yes.
Robin Heppell:
Okay. Well, we’ll just maybe talk about the top five for each of the three categories. How about that?
Lori Salberg:
Yes, that’d be great. So in that first category where you’re under 150 calls everyone in that, the winner circle, basically the top 15, you had to at least have 951.3 as your total value index score. So out of a thousand points, at least 900. So the 15th place was 951.3. And so our top five I’ll go through those is really interesting this year, our number one was Pinecrest Funeral Home in Hope Mills, North Carolina, with the score of a 981.6. So if you think about that, of all the people that, they’ve served, that’s a great number, right? It’s pretty close to perfect, right? That really is and there’s a good number of questions on our survey. And so this is people saying, “At a five, yes, this is how satisfied I am with you.” Right? “I’m highly satisfied with every experience that I had with you.”
And then in second place, we have Robertson Mueller Harper Funeral and Cremation Services, which is part of the Lucas Funeral Home Group. Now that location is in Fort Worth, Texas. They had a score of 979.8. I should mention that Pinecrest, the winner in this category is part of Park Lawn Corporation now. They were recently acquired.
Lori Salberg:
And then in third position we have Old Bridge Funeral Home that’s part of the Jersey Memorial group. That’s David Hernandez’s. A group of funeral homes in Old Bridge, New Jersey and they have a 974.1. And then the fourth in this category is Newell-Hoerling Mortuary. That’s part of, well, the Week’s Family Funeral Homes, rest weeks out of Centralia Washington with a 973, a great organization.
And then in the fifth place again, another really high score again, it’s a 971, so over 970. Again, these are just high numbers, right? It’s Ascension Funeral Home. Ascension Funeral Home in Gonzalez, Louisiana. That’s one of the legacy funeral services group. That’s a Michael super property, again, they’re at 971. So we’re really proud and happy to be able to give these awards out. We actually send out, again, we [inaudible 00:13:55] it live, so we have to mail them out, but we have some really beautiful glass trophies that we send out to everyone and certificates. And a lot of the organizations or some of the organizations have won multiple times over multiple years. So it’s nice when you go visit and you kind of see their display case and they’ve got all the glass trophies in there and they’re proudly displaying them and we’ll certainly be sending a lot of this out in social media and hoping that they send us pictures or post those on social media as well. So people see that they are best in class.
Robin Heppell:
For sure. Okay. Let’s go to category two, a 151 to 300 calls.
Lori Salberg:
Yes. So this is that one. So remember in that lower category, the minimum score was 951. In this middle category this year, the minimum score to be in that top 15 was 957. And our top five, if you remember in that last grouping, the fifth place position was a 971. The fifth place position here is a 978. So they’re just [inaudible 00:14:55] it completely, it’s crazy, but these are all incredible firms. So again, we have a Lucas Funeral Home winner. This is the winner with a 990.4. So Jimmy Lucas, whatever you’re doing right now, keep doing it. That’s the Lucas Funeral Home in Keller. So in Keller, Texas. Incredible job. I’m so proud of them. And second was Wells Funeral Home in Waynesville, North Carolina, also doing an incredible job. I was just there. They have a beautiful event center and an amazing, very friendly, wonderful staff. So I can see why people love them greatly part that community. And they had 988. So even that, you’re kind of going like, “How did we not win with a 988?”
Robin Heppell:
Yes. Exactly.
Lori Salberg:
And actually the winners in this category last big category last year were our number three position Posey. So Walker Posey’s Funeral home, Posey Funeral Homes in North Augusta, South Carolina, they’re at 987.38. We had to go to a two 10th on or a hundred percentage on this one to get number because we have someone right behind them. J Verne Wood Funeral Home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Who’s at [inaudible 00:16:11]. So we had to carry it out a couple decimals to make sure we have them in the right position. And then in fifth place, we have Emken-Linton Funeral Home in Texas City, Texas, another great firm. I feel like they also were winners last year.
Robin Heppell:
So Lori looking at this, there are four, 3.4 points separating the top four.
Lori Salberg:
Yes. Isn’t that crazy?
Robin Heppell:
Well, that is crazy. Yes.
Lori Salberg:
It’s so fun though. You’re a competitive person. You’re just going to… especially like…, “How do I get that? Two 10 or the three tens or whatever.”
Robin Heppell:
Oh, that’s great. Okay.
Lori Salberg:
It’s really Rob the difference between that and one survey, right? There’s just kind of one, one survey comes back, one more with a high score and it probably sets you over the top.
Robin Heppell:
Gotcha. Okay. Now let’s talk about the bigger firms. So before we get into the winners here, so these are 301 calls and up now, are there some firms in these lists that are a thousand calls, maybe even 2000 or how high would that go in this category? What could be the top end of calls.
Lori Salberg:
It just goes as it could be anything about 300. I don’t think that we have anyone in this category that is that large. I think everyone is under probably 600 ish is probably where we are maybe for this particular grouping of winners. Yes.
Robin Heppell:
Okay. Well, let’s hear the winners here.
Lori Salberg:
Okay. So in this category, it’s interesting because you do have a bigger spread. So our minimum qualifying score in this particular category of calls over 300 is a 918.7. And we had a lot of people floating in that range where we had to spend a lot of time making sure we had the right people in those [inaudible 00:18:16] like last positions. And then just under that, because we were definitely looking at a couple decimal points at that end.
And then it goes up to the high, which is the winner at 965.6. And so if you think about it, the other winners were in the 989, 90, and then this is 965. So again, larger you get, it’s a lot harder to give those personal services. And I think you’re right on too Rob is, how much are you really in the community where people are coming because they have these really strong relationships. I think that impacts for sure, but nonetheless, these are the winners and they should be proud of themselves for the outstanding job that they’ve done in serving their communities.
In the top position at number one is Olson Funeral and Cremation Services in Rockford, Illinois. And they have that 965.6. And just under them is Jason Harrell and Harrell Funeral Home in Austin, that’s their Austin, Texas location. And he’s got the 965.1.
And then in pulling in third and fourth position are the two Hansen mortuaries in Arizona. So Hansen mortuary, chapel in Phoenix at 964 and then Hansen Desert Hills Mortuary in Scottsdale are neighbors at JCG more than 961. And they have an incredible operation there. They have a lot going on, they have pets and grief pets, and they’re just a great bunch. And then in the fifth position is our own Jake Johnson’s funeral home in Sun City, Arizona. Menke Funeral Home. He somehow always makes the list. I promise that the data is real. Kelly Crowder there holds up the fort and she does an incredible job and they have a 955 in that fifth position. So Yes, people are just, I know they’re very excited. We’re happy to deliver great news. And so I can’t wait to see people again, posting this and seeing how they’re feeling about all the great work that they’re doing
Robin Heppell:
Now here, when we’re looking at the Hansens in third and forth, is there any intercompany competitions too? Like, “Hey, we’re better than you and.”
Lori Salberg:
Yes. So you saw some of the winners from… The number one I would say is probably the Legacy Group. So Michael Soper’s group and Bill Wimberly and the guys over there, they do such a great job overall, right? In general. And they have a bun. They always have a good number of winners in every category, which they do again this year, they have their own private kind of award ceremony, but they definitely are competitive internally. And they’re definitely all trying to vie for those positions. I think we’re starting to see that a little bit with that Park Lawn group. I think probably Jimmy Lucas’ all the ones that you’re kind of seeing, repeats because they’re the ones who are upping the numbers. It’s really interesting.
Robin Heppell:
Well, and that’s what I wanted to ask you about, is why, or how are these firms doing so well? And obviously there are some consistencies in the management, right? It’s not just one or two people. You’ve got different groups of people in different locations, but under the same company. So what’s common in these winners overall? Is it training? Is it just management style or what have you gleaned because you’re out there, you’re walking through the front doors. What do you see that makes certain firms excel and maybe ones that may not excel as well?
I think that there’s a couple things, I would say that there’s engagement. So one, they’re invested in making sure that they’re not just doing this like collecting information and getting surveys just to pat themselves on the back. Right? They actually take in this information and they want to do something with it. They want to get better. And I think that’s goes beyond just, I’m not going to say it’s because of performance tracker, but I think that they have numbers to actually measure most of these and the especially winners that we just named they’ll use the results to help with their incentive comp plans. So instead of just giving people bonuses based on sales or one or two things they’re able to say, “Hey, you’re going to qualify for a bonus if the score, or if your score from the family’s feedback is at a certain number.” Right?
And if we have a certain number of responses coming back to us, so that return rate is important to them too, because that means they’re engaged in actually looking for feedback and wanting that transparency. So I think there’s that part of it, just being engaged and being more driven, the more of the winners that popped in here now this year, definitely have moved over to our new platform, which is digital. And the difference in that new platform is that we have asked to have arrangers in there as well, or before it was just management, looking at these numbers. We now have every arranger actually looking at their own metrics and being able to see how they’re actually performing. So they’re invested in making difference as well. So I think that’s one thing.
And then just that each of those organizations, the ones that are on here, they’re just top notch. These are organizations who are very much focused on the customer and very much focused on personalization and how do they go above and beyond and how do they stand out, be above and beyond their competition. So, it’s not surprise me when I say Harrell and Hanson and of course Menke and Olson here. These are people who you see often trying to learn and implementing technology and, what more can I do to get better? We’re not just resting our laurels and knowing that, we’ve been around for 120 years and the community knows us. It’s not that way anymore. And these people, even though they have been around for a really long time, they’re driving to be better all the time. They’re constantly looking for ways to make improvements.
Robin Heppell:
For sure. Yes. And I just had a conversation the last episode with Nelson Thulin, from Johnson consulting, talking about the incentive compensation plans, right? And this makes total sense. It’s not just who makes the most sales or has the highest sales, but if you can tie the score to that too, that’s going to make them not only provide better service, but even making them the opposite of what I said earlier, making them make sure, “Oh no, when you get that link for the survey, make sure you fill it out.” Right? Like promoting it.
Lori Salberg:
Yes. And well, I love that you use the word promote because you’re promoting it, but then it gives back to you so that you can go promote more of your business. Right? So we actually have as part of Performance Tracker, we do focus on the net promoter score. So why wouldn’t you be asking how likely are you to recommend us? And then when you get all these great scores, look at these scores, these people are telling you, you did a fantastic job. So you get to take that and they say, “Yes, I’m willing to recommend you.” So why wouldn’t you call them up and say, “Okay, who do you want to recommend us to?” If you’re talking, if it was a pre-need or there’s an opportunity for pre-need or can you please post that online and put that on our Google [inaudible 00:25:11] make Google review, because we do appreciate the feedback and that’ll help us out a lot.
So you open up the opportunity for that when you’re actually asking the question and having this really transparent open dialogue with your families that you’re serving. Right? And that doesn’t mean you go and say, “Hey, I can’t stand it when I go to a store.” And somebody says, “Oh, can you fill up this thing and you’ll get a coupon and just give me a 10 please because I want.” No that makes me not want to do that. So we do great service and we let them decide, but we ask them, “Can you please do that? And that’s what we’re seeing
Robin Heppell:
For sure. Hey, now for all the folks that are listening that haven’t been involved with Performance Tracker, how can they get started?
Lori Salberg:
Yes. So they can go to either getperformancetracker.com that website, or you can even reach out to me directly at J3Tech Solutions now. So we’ve broken out into that company. So you can go to me, Lori, L-O-R-I @jthreetechsolutions.com or on either that or our J3Tech Solutions website, you can book an appointment to see a demo and we’re happy to share all of the amazing features and get you started as soon as possible, you can qualify.
Robin Heppell:
Absolutely. Yes. Well, this is great. Well, Hey Lori, thanks for taking your time out of your day and out of your travels zone. I know you’re not in the home office, so I really appreciate this and also just congratulations to all the winners and everyone who’s participating because they’re all trying to raise the bar for themselves, which then makes the entire profession better. Right?
Lori Salberg:
My goodness. That’s my favorite part about it. Yes. We’re all driving for everyone to get better. That’s awesome. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Robin Heppell:
You bet Lori. And I’d like to thank you our listeners for spending your time with us today as well. Our goal is to share our experiences, and insights in the hope that it may help other funeral professionals like you, improve your funeral enterprise. Make sure you check back soon for another episode of the Funeral X Podcast until the next one. This has been Lori Salberg and Robin Heppell.
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