Is This the Tipping Point for Online Arrangement?

Deathcare has experienced a transformation in the last three years. It’s been intense – and grueling at times – but the future is bright and full of opportunity.

Over the past decade I’ve been in deathcare, I’ve seen trends solidify right before my eyes. Obviously, the pandemic moved the needle quite a bit. I can’t honestly say I was quite sure of what was going on while it was happening, but with hindsight, as with most things, it all made sense.

After such a chaotic time, what trends did I most want to learn about? I wanted to dive deep into the changes in customer expectations around online arrangements and see how firms are implementing technology to help serve all of their families better.

When Tyler Yamasaki (CEO of PartingPro, an online arrangement tool and case management system) and I delved into the data from his company on, we learned a lot by analyzing customer behavior during the pandemic. We saw what shifts cemented as a trend and presented these changes at length at CANA’s 2023 Cremation Symposium and The Secrets Behind The Most Successful Online Cremation Businesses episode of The Direct Cremation Podcast we co-host.

​Now, while it’s cool to learn that “Bob” is the most common first name entered into PartingPro’s decedent database, it didn’t really give us any insight into the industry changes we were hoping to track. Nope, for that we had to look at other data – mainly data centered around consumers’ willingness to work with providers online.
What we found was…interesting.

The Tipping Point

The biggest changes we found were in customer willingness to complete online arrangements and do forms online.

Here’s a look at the increase in arrangements during that period.

You see a huge spike right in March of 2020. Well, there’s no surprise there! But the surprise is that the levels never went back down to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, it’s holding a new line of support at about double the levels we saw pre-pandemic – and clearly look to be trending upward from there. I think this step-function change is here to stay and reflects the huge increase in all e-commerce trends in the economy at-large. Companies were forced to adapt to online management systems and this shows that the implementation of those systems is here to stay.

Now, I’ll admit that this spike doesn’t tell the whole story. At that time we’re looking at, there was a large increase in overall deaths, given the presence of COVID-19, so we had to dig a little deeper.

Online vs. In-Person Arrangements

We needed to break down the cases into two cohorts: those who completed arrangements online and those who completed arrangements in person. What Tyler found was that prior to March 2020, about 33% of arrangements were completed online – a very respectable number in my opinion. After March of 2020, that jumped to 66%. The proportions completely flipped!

It’s hard to say how much of this change is attributable to funeral home staff pushing online arrangements versus a family’s proactive choice to start and complete online arrangements. I think it’s a combination of both, but I was curious to see if there was any data that would give more insight into customer behavior itself regarding online arrangements. Luckily, Tyler had an answer for me.

Tyler shared that prior to March 2020, about 11% of imminent and at-need cases were completed through online arrangements. He asked me to guess what that percentage jumped to after March 2020. I guessed that it had doubled, at least. I was wrong! It rose to 16.3%. Admittedly, I was a little upset I was so wrong. I had been doing so well on Tyler’s data quiz at that point I had a lot of confidence. However, after some reflection, I had two takeaways:

1. I did the actual math and saw that the increase was about 48%. That’s a lot! It’s reflective of a change in customer willingness to engage with funeral homes digitally.
2. The second takeaway is that the data shows that, like before the pandemic, families still want to talk to someone on the phone or in-person before making a decision on a funeral service provider. While families may expect your presence online to be credible, with a nice website and a number of good reviews, a majority of people still want to talk to a live human being. They want to establish a connection and gauge the warmth and level of care they’ll receive from your business.​

The entire conversation with Tyler really showed how important tech is to a funeral business in a post-Covid world, but it doesn’t mean that technology’s goal is to make us cold and uncompassionate. Technology is just a tool, and good tech implementation simply allows you to meet more customers where they are and free up your team’s time to deliver for those families that need the most attention and compassion.

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This post excerpted from Efficiency or Die: A Gentle Fireside Chat with Will and Tyler at CANA's Cremation Symposium on February 8-9, 2023. If you missed it, you can still catch some of the insights they shared on The Direct Cremation Podcast, particularly their episodes exploring The Secrets Behind The Most Successful Online Cremation Businesses.

Be sure to save the date for the next CANA Cremation Symposium coming February 14-16, 2024 to The LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip!

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Will de Michaelis is a licensed funeral director in California with 10 years of experience. Will spent most of his career in the industry at a high volume crematory and mortuary in Southern California which served over 4500 families per year. He’s worked closely with crematories, families, counselors, body donation, and metal recycling. He’s a big proponent of strategic implementation of tech in the funeral home space to make funeral homes more money and keep their best people happy.