For a small transaction service fee of only 1% – 2%, Styx will transform your existing informational website into a profit center.
The Problem
Funeral home margins have slipped from around 15% a decade ago to below 7% today. As margins continue to shrink, funeral directors can’t afford to manage low-cost offerings like direct cremations. You need to focus your time and attention on high-margin funerals.
But, increasingly, consumers are moving away from expensive funerals to lower-cost cremations. Today, 58% of Americans choose cremation as their end-of-life disposition, and in some states the cremation rate is greater than 80%.
Most funeral homes already have a rudimentary website, with a Contact page encouraging customers to call or come in. But they rarely have an E-Commerce capability.
If only you could use your website to onboard customers, to let them order directly and pay right there, online, to fill out all the required paperwork themselves, and sign online, without taking up your precious time and attention. But software like that is expensive, and you have to pay for it all up-front before making a dime.
If only there were an E-Commerce platform with Online Forms that you could link to your website somehow, and you only had to pay for it a little at a time, as customers paid you, with no up-front fees. If only …
The Solution
The Styx Logistics Funeral Home Solution provides you with the ability to seamlessly integrate our E-Commerce & Online Forms into your existing funeral home website; simply add a link from your website to our Forms.
(In this example, the Funeral Home is Cremstar. The “Order Now” button links to the Styx Order Forms.)
Customers pay online with a debit or credit card and then fill in all the required information directly online. And it’s important to note that the Forms feature your Funeral Home logo, providing a seamless branding experience to your customers.
Manage the entire process through your smartphone with our CMS & Logistics Apps (Funeral Director, Driver, and Crematory versions). Generate all the required documentation. Send emails to customers, informing them it’s time to pick up their cremains or that their certs are on their way (plus tracking #s). And when customer errors inevitably occur, update and generate new documents at the touch of a button, including Authorizations to Cremate, dispositions (pickup, ship, scatter), NOKs, and even Authorizing Agents.
You can also assign and track your drivers from removal to drop-off, capture odometer readings, and digitally document past removals … right from your smartphone, anytime, anywhere you happen to be.
“The Styx Logistics Funeral Home Solution is the ‘secret sauce’ behind what we do at Cremstar. Customers order and pay directly online, usually without even calling us. Plus, all the information they input is automatically entered into the required documents. The Styx Apps don’t just help me manage our dispatches and keep an eye on our drivers. They also let me edit Authorizations to Cremate, dispositions (pickup, ship, scatter), NOKs, and even Authorizing Agents when customers make a mistake—right there on my phone, no matter where I am, in the office or on the road. Cost savings and convenience. Styx has completely revolutionized my business.”
Michael T. Krause Cremstar of PA
All sales are processed through the Styx Logistics Square account. Styx reconciles all Funeral Home sales every two weeks and sends payments electronically via ACH to the Funeral Home, minus whatever part of the 3% (Square) transaction fee we can’t pass back to consumers in your state (e.g. 100% in PA, but only cash items in NJ). The funeral home is only responsible for your share of the transaction fee, if any.
Funeral Home Percentage of Profits on Direct Cremation Sales: 98% – 99%
