Selecting a funeral director can be a confusing business.  We only do it when we’re at our lowest and when we’re least inclined to do lengthy research to find the best option.  Sometimes it’s tempting to go for a corporate, High Street chain.  The name will be familiar, and it can feel like a really big business is most likely to do a good job.  However, we think taking the independent route is best, and here are the reasons why:

• Independent funeral directors tend to be family businesses, rooted in their communities. Corporate branches inevitably tend to be more impersonal and distant. Their first responsibility is to their shareholders. For an independent, it’s to the people they serve every day of the year.
• Then there’s the personal touch.  Walk into a corporate today and the people you speak to in the branch are unlikely to be the people who will actually carry out your wishes on the day of the funeral.  With most independents you will be dealing with the same people from start-to-finish, so they will be by your side through the whole process.  In fact, it’s a bit like having a baby.  Ask a mother-to-be if they want to have a community midwife who they work with in the weeks and days leading up to the birth and who will be there beside them throughout, or if they’d want to go to a big maternity hospital and perhaps be looked after by three or four different and unfamiliar people over the course of the entire experience.  Relationships matter.
• Every funeral is unique, or at least it should be.  The big companies will say they offer a personalised service, and no doubt they will try to do so up to a point.  In reality, there are limits within their fixed, corporate structure which mean there can be a one size fits all approach, whereas a good independent will go the extra mile to try to make sure every detail matches to the needs of the deceased’s loved ones.
• In these straightened financial times, people are often shocked at how much a funeral may cost and will want to find out about spreading payments over a longer period to make it more manageable.  Corporate companies will have arrangements with finance houses that will charge interest, much as one would be offered if buying a fridge or TV.  A good independent will have a grown-up, sympathetic conversation with a client who is concerned about cost, to work out together the best way of dealing with the problem, rather than simply sending them elsewhere to effectively borrow money.
• There are some things an independent funeral director will do to make sure your experience is as good as it can be for which a corporate may not be geared up.  Chain stores are unlikely to be able to help with a caterer, a hall, choir and other musicians, and they’re not going to be as familiar as a local business with the various ministers and celebrants you might want to have.  They might well not understand the difference, for example, between a minister from the Seventh-Day Adventists and one from the Church of God in Christ, let alone know them personally.  Families often ask if we can help with coach or minibus hire, or wheelchair access vehicles, or if we can offer support in arranging for family members to fly in from overseas and stay in hotels, and we always do everything we can to take the weight from their shoulders with these elements.  These are all things with which a corporate is unlikely to be able to offer help.  As for organising something as personal as Nine Night, for example, most big companies wouldn’t know where to begin.
• For an independent, our reputation is of inestimable importance.  Unlike the corporates, much of our business comes to us as a result of recommendations among the communities we serve.  We have to make sure every job is as near perfect as it could possibly be.  What’s more, that’s not just a business commitment, it’s a personal one.  We do this job, not as employees in need of a pay packet, but as people who understand how important a funeral is, and who feel a strong responsibility to their neighbours and friends, to be the best that we can be.
• Lastly, a riddle.  When is an independent, not an independent?  The answer is, when it’s trading under a different name from that of its parent company.  The big companies buy up successful local businesses with a strong reputation, specifically because they know how important that can be when people are making this most difficult of choices.  Sometimes they keep the name above the door, even if everything else they offer is actually a carbon copy of that on offer from every other shop in their chain.  So, if you are in need of a funeral director and you think you’ve selected an independent, don’t forget to ask if they truly are such.  The answer may surprise you.