Playbook Online and Funeral Live at St Laurentius: ‘Everyone can handle this’
Begraafplaats & Crematorium St. Laurentius has long been located in Rotterdam's Crooswijk district, a stone's throw from the city centre. Since it switched to 302 Uitvaart's software package, St. Laurentius not only saves a lot of time when creating funeral services, but its service to funeral directors and next of kin has also been dramatically optimised.
As a cemetery and crematorium in the heart of Rotterdam, St Laurentius has to deal with a wide diversity of cultures on a daily basis. And although the organisation always manages to provide next-of-kin with a funeral that meets all wishes and expectations, in the past a lot of time was regularly taken up with this.
For this reason, St Laurentius looked for an innovative solution to both save time and increase the quality of its services. Hans Knol, who has been working as a funeral director at St. Laurentius for many years, and his colleagues soon arrived at 302 Uitvaart's platform. ‘We now have all our software support with one provider, and it works perfectly,’ he says.
Situation: error messages at annoying times
‘We noticed that we regularly lost a lot of time putting together PowerPoints for families,’ Hans Knol says of the period before switching to 302 Funeral. At that time, funeral directors still ‘simply’ used Microsoft's well-known presentation tool. It often happened that this still had to be adjusted at Laurentius.
‘Checking and adjusting if necessary took a lot of time, especially when combining photos with music. That has to be fine-tuned, but that takes time - especially if next of kin want to add photos at a later stage,’ Knol explains. That impact in time was undesirable, but there was an even bigger problem in the meantime.
‘On occasion, we experienced that during a funeral we suddenly got an error message on the screen,’ recalls Knol. ‘An occasional service even crashed. We wanted to get rid of that permanently. We wanted to go to one convenient system, for both our main building and the chapel elsewhere in the grounds, that would just do it all the time.’
‘Endlessly putting together PowerPoints for families took up a lot of our time. It ended up being way too much work.’
Hans Knol, funeral director St. Laurentius
Solution: all-in-one solution that works like a charm
302 Funeral's software package proved to be a hit for St. Laurentius. St. Laurentius had Playbook Online implemented in the main building and combined it with Playbook2Go as a portable solution to play services on a large screen even in the chapel - where there is no internet.
‘Moreover, since the corona pandemic, we were already offering livestreaming,’ Knol explains, ’but via a different platform. We also converted that directly to Funeral Live from 302 Funeral. So we have everything with one provider, and it works like a charm.’
With Playbook Online, bereaved families are able to compose funerals arranged at St Laurentius entirely by themselves, in close consultation with the funeral director. Knol receives many positive reactions from next-of-kin: ‘People are very satisfied with it, because it just works nice. Services are easy to make and it soon looks very nice. And if people have questions at all, nine times out of ten there are children or grandchildren who know the solution, so such a question doesn't even come to us.’
Many funeral directors with whom St Laurentius works are also delighted with the options available thanks to 302 Funeral. Knol: ‘You can easily add media at the last minute, and with a crystal-clear manual, almost everyone comes out of it. And what I personally really like: before next of kin submit their service, they receive a pop-up alerting them to the preview of the service they have created. They can then see for themselves exactly what the service will look like with us later.’
‘Playbook2Go in our chapel works perfectly. Even without an internet connection, we can offer beautiful services there.’
Results: time savings and optimal service
The time savings achieved by the St. Laurentius team by using 302 Funeral is significant. This leaves more time for actually speaking to relatives and other guests, which has enabled St Laurentius to further optimise its services.
‘We definitely notice the difference,’ Knol explains. ‘302 Funeral helps us to provide next of kin with a beautiful service that meets all expectations. People are happy with that.’
Technical problems? There never really are, although Knol recalls one service where something didn't seem to be going right. ‘Then we immediately called 302. They logged in remotely and were able to help us immediately in person. It turned out to be a mistake made by a relative. But that doesn't matter: we were helped immediately, that's what matters.’
‘302 helps you immediately when you call with questions. They log in remotely and solve the problem.’
