About Lodge Brothers
Established in 1780, Lodge Brothers is a family-owned funeral director based in the south of the United Kingdom. Offering an intimate, expert and comprehensive service, the company’s focus is on caring for their local communities. This is reflected in the company motto “The family you can turn to”.
The trigger for adopting a CRM was the company’s primary growth objective, to generate new leads for their Funeral Plans. However, understanding the limitation of their current business software, Funeral Plan Manager, Michelle Easterbrook, knew that they needed to implement a system that could effectively manage customer relationships, set tasks and reminders for staff, and create a client database.
Introducing a CRM System
Lodge Brothers uses an industry specific software which specialises in organising services for funerals. However, the lack of sales management features and the fact that Lodge Brothers operates numerous branches meant that the software could not meet all of the business requirements.
Michelle explained, “We would receive enquiries from new leads but were unable to record a history of our interactions, making customer relationship management difficult. If I wanted to report on any client data, I’d have to call the software company to generate it and then, often the report wouldn’t be what I wanted”.
The decision was made to adopt a CRM system, and an IT consultant recommended SpotlerCRM.
Creating a Sales Pipeline
After signing up to SpotlerCRM, Michelle soon found her department using the CRM to manage more and more of the daily sales processes. “If a client visits one of our branches, their contact information is taken and input into the CRM system. We then use the CRM to follow up the leads with quotations, managing tasks, running mailings and more.”
“We found the adoption process very easy as SpotlerCRM is exactly what the brand name suggests, simple. When we first started using it, the free webinars were extremely helpful and when we hire new starters, they are able to use the system with very little training.”
Benefits to the Family Business
Lodge Brothers have now been using SpotlerCRM for four years and describe it as “essential” to their business. Michelle explained, “We’re now able to provide a more personalised service. We can record the customer history for every client, make sure that we follow up leads properly, and easily generate sales reports. It’s definitely made the business more efficient.”
Building a Customer History
“A good example of this is that we could receive a call a year after the previous contact with a client. Using SpotlerCRM, a member of staff can instantly pull up the client’s history, saving the client from re-explaining their circumstances and what they need updating. Not only has this improved efficiency, but it also helps the company to build upon our professional and caring reputation.”
Working with SpotlerCRM
Michelle added “SpotlerCRM team has always been really friendly. The staff make you feel that your company matters and they’re always happy to help. I’ve attended many of their CRM conferences (which are always held at great locations) where they’ve always taken on board my feedback. I’m looking forward to the next one!”
Final Thoughts
Michelle concludes, “SpotlerCRM is now an important part of Lodge Brothers. I couldn’t run my department, and I don’t know what the business would do without it. We haven’t used the CRM system to its full capacity yet, so there’s room for any business to grow.”