Nicki Wiedeman (Dead Ringers): How Successful Funeral Homes Should Answer the Phone | #21

The Direct Cremation Podcast

Nicki Wiedeman is the First Call Faciliator of Dead Ringers. Dead Ringers is the death care’s premiere mystery shop provider. Since its founding in 2015, they've placed 8,500 calls throughout the US and Canada. Dead Ringers specializes in systematically helping individual funeral homes improve their phone etiquette. They’ve mastered the art of customer service and help funeral home teams level-up and serve families better.

Nicki answered her first customer service call in 1989 for a bank in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has since cultivated a 30-year career in improving the customer experience. She’s on a mission to remedy the subpar service customers receive when calling businesses.

Dead Ringers Website: https://deadringers.co

Timestamps
(00:00) - Intro
(00:46) - Introducing Dead Ringer's Nicki Wiedeman
01:33) - What is a mystery shopper?
(03:13) - The most common things uncovered in shopper calls
(05:10) - Can empathy be taught and trained?
(11:55) - The ingredients for a good death call
(16:29) - Building trust with open-ended questions
(22:56) - Ideal organizational structure to manage phones
(33:05) - Being self-aware of the terminology we use
(36:42) - Listen to yourself on the phone
(40:50) - What technology looks like in 10 years

For Innovative Funeral Directors Blazing a Trail. Find us at directcremation.com
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

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