Lori Wilkey is an owner and mortician of Bowman Funeral Home. We sat down with Lori and mortician Randy Basterrechea to talk about how Parting Pro has has helped the save both time and money. Watch or read our conversation below.
Lori Wilkey: I’m Lori Wilkey, and I’m a mortician and I’m one of the owners of the funeral home.
Randy Basterrechea: I’m Randy Basterrechea, mortician.
Parting Pro: Alright, awesome. We’ve been working together for some time now, but if you can think back, let’s start from the beginning. Can you remember and share with us what kind of tasks or problems you were trying to solve and your frustrations with them?
Randy Basterrechea: Yeah, before Parting Pro, we were doing everything by hand – writing out forms, having the families either come in and sign the forms, or we would have to fax the forms to them. Some of the problems with that is, of course, it’s a multipage form, certain places have to be signed and initialed, and we were having problems because nothing was ever coming back complete.
Parting Pro: Got it, so there was a lot of back and forth busy work following up, making sure they had it and then a lot of printing and uploading and sending back, I’m guessing?
Randy Basterrechea: A lot of faxing, yeah.
Lori Wilkey: Especially when we had multifamilies – for instance, in Idaho, the majority of the children have to sign for a cremation authorization, so we were not just sending it out to one person, but multiple locations and people and trying to keep track of all of that.
Parting Pro: Got it. What about now, how is that process done now? What aspect of this process has been improved by Parting Pro?
Lori Wilkey: Oh, it’s simpler.
Randy Basterrechea: Much simpler. We don’t have to fax, the people don’t even have to find a bank or a Kinkos or something like that to try and print out the form, sign it, and rescan it. With DocuSign, I’ve had multiple families just do it on their phone, electronically. It’s much simpler.
Lori Wilkey: We feel like we’re getting our documents back a lot sooner, too. So, families have the ability to return those quicker for us, and it feels like there isn’t a big delay in the process either.
Parting Pro: How does it affect your business if you get the documents back faster?
Parting Pro: We can’t do the cremation until we’ve received all of the paperwork back from the family. And also, I think families actually like to be able to… if they are away from us, to be able to sit there and go through the step by step, pick urn, pick an alternate container… It makes them a little bit more in the process, even though they aren’t here, they are being part of the process.
Parting Pro: Got it. You’re referencing the online engagement tools from your website, right? Not just the forms, but the ability to make the entire arrangement on their own.
Lori Wilkey: Right. It’s a very easy process for them to start from the first step, all the way to the end.
Parting Pro: Got it. And do you remember how you heard about us and what piqued your interest, to begin with?
Lori Wilkey: Yeah, I do remember how I heard about you. I met you guys at CANA at the Las Vegas convention. You guys stood up and gave us a little presentation, then I went over and talked with you guys, and then I think we started in July, after that we went back and forth for a little while and then we decided to do it in July.
Parting Pro: Got it. Do you remember what in particular made you decide to do business with us? What made you pull the trigger to start working together?
Lori Wilkey: We had a lot of families that were outlined, and I just thought it would be a lot easier if we could pick up some of those cases that were further out, so they didn’t have to drive in – so it had a little bit more ease. Definitely, for some of our families who were 90 miles from here were able to make arrangements. They could go online and look through everything and decide that’s what they would like to do. So we were having a lot of families and having to do the paperwork back and forth, and it was just easier for us to go ahead and have you guys help us out by the program and allow that process to work a little bit easier for us, and that’s what we did.
Parting Pro: Awesome. You guys had a lot of people from far away, so then it makes their jobs a lot easier as well, right? They don’t have to drive an hour and a half to come to see you. Can you describe the process of working with us? How we onboarded, and what area did you find the most value in working with us, and why do you think that is?
Randy Basterrechea: As far as getting signed up with you, or…?
Parting Pro: Anything, getting signed up, or after you’ve already signed up. Any aspect of working with us from deciding to working with us, to today.
Randy Basterrechea: You’ve been easy to work with as far as I’m concerned. Any time we’ve had any type of an issue or something with shipping – really, urn shipping has been the only issue we’ve run into a couple of times, but everything has been handled fast and with minimal action on our part.
Lori Wilkey: I think the onboarding process was really easy for us. It was nice because we all sat down and you guys walked us through step by step with what it was going to be, helped us set up all of our passwords and usernames for everybody, showed everybody how the process was going to work, and then showed us how those emails would come in, or cases would come in. Onboarding was easy, and you guys were great as far as that. Customer service has been awesome too.
Parting Pro: Awesome, glad to hear that. Really glad to hear that. I’m imagining somebody watching this right now – they’re probably going through that same process that you were going through. What is something you may say to them to push them over the edge to choosing Parting Pro?
Lori Wilkey: It will save you time and money. It will save you time and money – I think the amount of cases that you can actually work with at one time, and know that they’re going to go pick an urn, or alternative container, fill out the information and paperwork in regards to the cremation and pay for it is maybe 15 or 20 minutes out of a family’s time. It’s a great program. I think if anybody is questioning whether it’s worth the money, I would say you’re crazy. You’re going to spend more hours for staff and overhead having somebody like us do it by faxing it or mailing it or doing those things, it’s going to cost you more than if it would be if you just bought the program and just did that.
Parting Pro: Awesome, thanks for that. That’s really great. What about in the future? What goals do you have for this year, what are you looking into now?
Randy Basterrechea: Well, we talked a little bit about introducing some of our traditional options into the program, for traditional families.
Lori Wilkey: We would like to work with that and see of some ways to do that for families who are wanting to be… Maybe what we offer for cremation, we would like to see if we can go forward with that with traditional families too.
Parting Pro: Got it, so expanding.
Lori Wilkey: Especially for some of our outlying families that aren’t here in the area, so they have that ability to make those same types of arrangements.
Parting Pro: Okay. So, streamline that process as well, that we did for cremation already. Nice. Alright, well – thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, guys.
Lori Wilkey: Thank you, we appreciate it.