Co-op Digital Blog

We reached a milestone last month when our colleagues in Edinburgh started arranging real funerals with the digital service we’d designed together. Although they’re keeping some of the existing, more paper-based ways of doing things as a safety blanket until they get used to things, our Edinburgh branches are the first to use our new ‘at need’ digital funeral arrangement service.

We’ve been testing the service with colleagues in Bolton and Edinburgh. For this post, we’ve spoken to Jamie Rafferty, a Funeral Director in Edinburgh, to find out how colleagues feel about what we’ve built so far. We recognise that Jamie is just one user and that what he’s sharing here is what he’s found to be the general opinion of the digital service so far.

Of course, we’re still listening to colleagues about what we need to improve before we roll things out to other branches and we’ll continue to do that.

Saving time and keeping details central and safe

When Funeralcare colleagues receive a call telling them that someone’s died, they record details of the deceased. The digital service is helping them move away from paper forms and instead asks them to add the details into a digital form. This change means the information is held safely and is available immediately so other Funeralcare colleagues can access it when they need to.

Jamie’s found that colleagues like only having to capture information once. He says, “It’ll help save time. At the moment there’s lots of duplication as we have to keep repeating information such as name, address etc in several paper forms.”

Giving everyone instant visibility

It’s incredibly important that colleagues know who they have in their care and where they are. The deceased can now be booked in and out through the digital service. It also requests that 2 people verify unique ID numbers when colleagues move them to a different location.

Edinburgh colleagues say they’re getting used to doing these things digitally rather than relying on paper records. “Previously, we’d have had to make lots of phone calls to consolidate the paper mortuary registers in all the branches,” says Jamie. Now, the transparency is making it easier to keep track of who’s where, when.

Knowing what’s been done

Colleagues get involved at different stages of planning and performing a funeral so communicating progress is essential. We’ve developed a new care and preparation section to show which tasks have been completed, which ones are in progress and which ones are still left to do.

Not only does this help manage the workflow, Jamie’s colleagues who speak directly to clients say it’s helping them arrange viewing appointments for family members. Now, if a client wants to come in and see their loved one, they can make an appointment straight away because colleagues don’t have to make several calls to find out about the progress.

Personalising the funeral

There’s no such thing as a typical funeral and our all colleagues want to do everything they can to help families give their loved one a personal send-off.

To help, we’ve built ‘about me’ text boxes so colleagues can make notes as they learn more about the deceased. For example, if someone was a big football fan, colleagues can make a note and might then suggest choosing flowers in their team’s colours or plan a route that goes past a certain stadium.

The boxes for extra details have been welcome additions. “It’s all about making the funeral special and making sure the wishes of the family are followed,” says Jamie.

Visibility of availability

The digital service gives colleagues access to a shared calendar which can be seen by all Funeralcare colleagues within a region. It has filters so they can see when funeral directors within their care centre are available. This means they can provide a quicker service by provisionally booking in a funeral while a client is sitting with them. “Before the digital service, colleagues had to leave the client on their own, or ring them back, because we’d have to phone a resource department in order to find out about availability,” says James.

Where next for the Funeralcare digital service?

We’ll be coming out of beta soon and we expect to be live in 4 regions before Christmas. Then we plan to roll out the digital service across the rest of the country during 2018. We’ll also be doing more work to make things more comprehensive. As well as doing more to help colleagues we have plans to build some client-facing services. So while the service gets more users, it also keeps getting better through continuous delivery.

Funeralcare team