By Joey Haas
Transcript from our video interview with Zach Chatterton at Gather
Heather:
Hi everyone, and thanks for checking in with us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips and Technology, where we chat with industry professionals to discuss marketing trends, business tips, and technology innovation, and discuss how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. I’m Heather Mierzejewski. I am the marketing director here at Funeral Innovations
Joey:
And I’m Joey, I’m the marketing and design coordinator at Funeral Innovations. And today our guest is Zac Chatterton. He’s the CEO for Gather, or is that the, is it Gather app or just Gather?
Zach:
Just Gather.
Heather:
Great. So we’re so glad that you’re joining us today, Zach. How about if you start us off by telling us a little bit about who you are your company and what you guys do,
Zach:
I’d love to, and it’s great to be here. I love what you guys are doing. We listened to every episode, so it’s, it’s fun to be on it. Yeah, as far as what we do. So we’re Gather. We’re a funeral home software platform and we’re growing like crazy, which is fun. We’re based here in Boise, Idaho. And we have our whole team here in the office. Well, half of them here in the office because of COVID. But we’re excited to be doing what we’re doing. We’re fully dedicated to the funeral space and innovating within that space. So it’s been a lot of fun. And as far as my background, so born and raised here in Idaho, and I’ll actually tell the story, I guess, of why Gather was started. Cause it kind of comes from my own personal life. So this was just a few months before I was born. My parents were living here in Idaho and my dad went fishing for the day with his best friend and he put on his cowboy hat and kissed my mom and said, I love you. And unfortunately as funeral directors deal with every day, he didn’t come home that day. His boat had flipped over in the snake river and unfortunately they couldn’t save him. And so that, you know, I was not even born yet, but my poor mom had two little kids just trying to survive and figure out what to do with life and how to move on. And luckily at the heart of that story, there was an incredible funeral director. I remember this was years ago, but I asked my mom, you know, what was that experience like losing my dad and tears came to her eyes immediately. She was back in that moment instantly. And she said, oh, it was, it was terrible. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t, you know, I had a list of a hundred things I was trying to finish and my head was in the clouds. And then I asked her, what was it like working with the funeral home? And she said, you know, her eyes changed and she kind of lit up and she said he was incredible. He was kind, he put his arm around me. He was there for me. He helped me the best that he could. And you know, she remembered that 30 some years later. And so that’s why Gatherer exists as a company. That’s what sparked the idea is we want to help funeral homes to help people like my mom. And as you guys can imagine a start up, running and growing a company is not easy. I would have quit a long time ago, but luckily we have that vision and that mission to help people. And I just see that picture of my poor mom, pregnant with me, trying to figure things out. And we want to be the tool set that the funeral home can use to better serve families like my mom. And we’re completely in the background. We’re fully white labeled for the funeral homes that they get all of the credit, all of the benefit of offering gathered to their families. And it’s, it’s really rewarding. We believe in funeral directors, we have funeral directors on staff. And so we’re committed to this industry and trying to help as much as we can.
Heather:
That’s a powerful story. So tell us a little bit more about what you do for the funeral homes themselves.
Zach:
Yeah. Great question. So a lot it’s soup to nuts. So full case management, we do everything on the funeral home side, helping you with your contract, we map in your entire GPL. So you have a digital showroom of all of your products. You can click what you want, including packages, taxes and everything. It will automatically generate a contract for you. We handle all of the e-signatures. So we map in all of the funeral homes forms for them. So from day-one using Gather, their GPL is in there. Their forms are all in there. And then it’s a, a task list that’s customizable for a funeral home and we help with everything that needs to be done. All of that ultimately flows into QuickBooks for the funeral home. So it helps automate that process as well as the collection process. There’s a payment portal, so families can go in and pay. We also send out a card reader, so funeral homes can swipe a card and it flows directly into the software. I’d say one of the things that differentiates us the most from other software out there is the collaborative side of it. So from day-one with Gather, we realized the family needs to be part of the case management software, which is kind of a revolutionary idea. And so funeral homes invite the family into the same ecosystem into the same platform and the family can then help out with things that they need to do, writing the obituary and uploading photos. And then we have a full aftercare module as well. That helps the family do things that they need to do. Things like close your Facebook accounts or cancel your Sprint phone, or, you know, cancel credit cards or whatever else the family needs to do after the services. So it’s a way for funeral homes to stand out and offer something additional to the family that’s planning. And then one of the most exciting things. So I have here, we have fully integrated live streaming, which with COVID, as you can imagine, is, has been incredibly popular for us. You know, homes are scurrying and trying to figure out how to live stream. And so our system, this happened so Violetta who’s on our team. She came in and she had just read an article about a family that couldn’t even go to the funeral service because of COVID. And we had on our roadmap to build live streaming, but that kind of sparked, hey, let’s stop what we’re doing right now. And let’s build a live streaming solution into gathers so we can help funeral homes and the whole team got to work. It was right, and COVID hit the U S. And so we were all working for home from home trying to figure this out, but ultimately we came up with a really incredible solution. As you can see here, it comes with a camera that comes with a, a directional microphone and a tripod. You send out a case and then it also comes with a tablet. So you can use the tablet to control the camera, to zoom in and pan. And that type of thing, we handle all of the support, all of the training, everything that’s needed to get up and going. So it’s been a lot of fun to see that. And I think back to the story of my mom, how great would it have been for me to see what was said at my dad’s funeral? You know, I would have cherished that forever. I would show my kids that, my grandkids eventually, you know? And, but it’s just gone, you know, and that happens so often. So what this does is it’ll do a live stream automatically, and it works from anywhere. So you can get the graveside, the viewing from a church from your chapel, wherever. But then it automatically creates a recording that we then host in store forever.
Heather:
It’s stored in the cloud forever, then, or on your servers.
Zach:
Yeah. So the family can come back to that and continually treasure that.
Heather:
They have a link to it that they can go to anytime. Yeah. That’s terrific.
Joey:
So obviously you, you talked about how the live streaming has definitely benefited funeral homes since the pandemic. And you talked about how you guys handled the training process. Could you talk a little bit about what that training process looks like in terms of how you’re helping funeral homes navigate that live streaming?
Zach:
Yeah. Great question, Joey. So funeral directors are not videographers. You know, they, they went to school to be funeral directors and that’s what they’re wonderful at. And so we wanted to remove that component of trying to figure out what camera, what settings, the microphone and how to hook it all up. And so we’ve simplified that entire process and we send them everything in the mail, they get it in a single package. And as soon as they get it, we’re tracking it. So we’ll give them a call and we’ll set up a training with their team. And it usually takes about 45 minutes. We walk them through how to hook it all up. We walked through a few test cases with them. We answer any questions that they have. We train multiple times if needed. And people are surprised at how simple it is. We’ve really, you know, made it as simple as possible. There’s a button on the back that you can push and it automatically connects to the case in the case management side. But then in addition to that training, we also offer support. So a lot of times, as you can imagine, okay, we’re doing our first live stream. We’re nervous. What are we, you know, are we going to do it the right way? And so we have a system on our side where we’re watching all the live streams that are coming up and we’ll proactively reach out to the funeral home and say, hey, we’re here for you. We’ll call an hour ahead and say, let’s get set up. Let’s figure this out together. Once they do it once or twice they’re on their own and they can run with it. We’re still watching and monitoring as well. One other thing that we’ve added is with the tablet that we send out, we can actually remote into the tablet and fix any issues with the sound or the positioning or anything which is great. So we’re proactively fixing problems that the funeral home might not even know about. And then we’d let them know, you know, hey, we fixed this just so you know, for next time, here’s how you should do it instead. So we want to take the guesswork out of it so that funeral homes can continue to put their arms around the family and not worry about cameras. I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot that goes into it. Like the microphone alone, we tested, I think, 12 different microphones and we tested ambient noise. We tested how long the distance we test. We put a fan on it. We did it outside, at night, but we, there was like consumer reports. We were really trying to figure this thing out. And we did that. So the funerals don’t have to.
Heather:
Yeah. And a quick question on that. So your, is it a unidirectional microphone? So you’re just trying to pick up that straight on sound?
Zach:
Yep, yep. Yeah. And the great thing about the camera lens as well is it has 150 degree viewing angle. So you can put it, you know, five or 10 feet away from the stage and still capture without much distortion on the sides. You can still capture what’s going on. And this, it’ll pick up some of the ambient noise, but it’s directional. So it’ll pick up where you’re pointing it. So we have some people that will put it all the way at the back of the chapel and it’ll still pick up the speaker. So it’s a pretty good microphone.
Heather:
That’s great. That’s great. So what’s the biggest thing you wish funeral professionals knew or framed differently, what mistakes do you see funeral professionals making in the digital technology space and what do you wish they were doing different?
Zach:
Yeah, and this is when I I’ve been thinking a lot about, and I hope I phrase this the right way and to articulate it clearly, first of all, we’re honored to be part of this process and we play a small little part in what funeral directors do and we’re, we’re humbled and grateful to kind of have a seat at that table. The thing I would say though, is some funeral directors out there and this happened yesterday. So I’ll explain this with a story. So we got a chat, I was in the, it was on my lunch break. I was in the line for Chick-fil-A and we got a check from a lady, just a family member who was looking for live stream solution. So she reached out and she said, can you guys please help me? My husband just died. The funeral home doesn’t offer live streaming. I need help. And so that, you know, breaks my heart cause that’s my mom right there. Right. and so, you know, it was a long shot. I said, hey, do you have the funeral home’s name? Maybe I can give them a call. And she was just, you know, going through the worst moments of her life. And now she’s out trying to figure out livestream. She’s trying to figure out the camera and Facebook live and YouTube and whatever else. And she’s stressed because she doesn’t want to be, or one for family members doesn’t want to be at the funeral trying to live stream and record while watching the service. And so my heart just broke for her. Luckily I was able to call the funeral home there in Maryland. And this was just yesterday and reached out to him and explained what we do at Gather. And luckily he was receptive to what we were doing. And he said, you know what? Let’s give it a try. I want to help this family. Let’s give it a try. And so yesterday we put together his package and we overnighted it to him and it arrived this morning. So he now has the package and we’re going to train him today. We’re going to be on, on call on Saturday. We’re on call every Saturday and Sunday to help out. And I called the lady back and you know, she’s still frantic trying to figure this out. And I told her, hey, look, we, we took care of this for you. Here’s what we did. The funeral home has it handled. You don’t need to worry about it. And she was asking, well, who needs to hold the camera? And what needs, what needs to happen and how early do we need to be there? And as I said, no, like, you don’t need to worry about anything. The funeral home is going to do this. And she started crying and she said, thank you so much, sir. And so what I would say to answer your question specifically is funeral homes, it’s in their benefit to help families with this difficult task, whether it’s live streaming or whatever else, if funeral homes just compete on price, it’s a race to the bottom. And it ultimately just, you know, you have less and less time to help more and more people. And it’s, it’s a race to the bottom. And it’s the threat of becoming a commoditized industry. If instead funeral homes can compete on value and adding value to the family and creating an experience for the family that they’re going to remember for years, decades, it’s the opposite. It’s a spiral up. And so my recommendation would be, you know, help the families as much as you can and Gather wants to wants to help you to help them. And you know, you’re not technology people most of the time, funeral directors. And so we can be your technology arm. We can be that group of really smart developers who are right across the room from me here who figured all this out, and you can just tap into that and offer those services and, and be the hero. Our tagline is we love funeral directors and we really do. We want to help them as much as we can. So that would be my advice.
Joey:
That was really well said. Yeah. I think that’s really great perspective to have.
Heather:
Yeah. And it sounds like you took that, all the funeral directors I know want to serve their families and you just took that technology piece as a problem out of the situation and made it a solution instead of a challenge. So, yeah. That’s terrific.
Heather:
Yeah. So funeral, so Funeral Innovations and Gather obviously just recently completed an integration. And do you think you could talk about how that works and the functionality that allows from your side of it?
Zach:
Yeah, we’re, we’re really excited about this. So we were excited to work with you guys and partner with you guys. So the way it works is funeral homes, don’t like double data entry, right? You don’t want to put data into multiple systems. And so the way the integration works is they can enter their data, their cases into Gather, and it will automatically flow directly to their website which is fantastic, especially thinking about live streaming. So they can put all the information for the live stream and it will automatically flow to their Funeral Innovations website, which is fantastic. And we’ve made the integration really intelligent, so it’s going to synch everything that they want it to synch. So it can see the profile photo that the family uploads, if a date and time on an event is changed in Gather or even on their calendar on their phone, it will sync directly to Funeral Innovations, so it’s always up to date. They can turn off the automatic sync into a manual sync if they want. So it’s really robust. We’ve been testing it really thoroughly. And like I said, we’re excited to work with you guys. It’s one of the things that our funeral home partners have been asking for for quite a while. And so we’re excited to be able to announce that and roll it out. So we appreciate you guys working with us and we’re excited for the future.
Heather:
Yeah. We’re excited too. I know both Zack and Greg have been really excited about this partnership, so that’s good. So talk a little bit more in the big picture about any trends that you’re seeing in the industry, or if you want to make predictions for what you think, so much has changed in the past six months, but like, are you seeing anything or want to make any predictions about the next six months or the next year?
Zach:
Yeah. yeah, I’ll make a prediction. I would say with COVID, it’s kind of changed everything. And the prediction that I would make is that those changes will be longer lasting than the virus itself, the pandemic itself. So one thing I, you guys had Mark Canale, who’s one of our customers who live streams. You asked him a question, you said, once there’s a vaccine, do you envision still live streaming? And his answer was, for the rest of my career I will live stream. So I would make that prediction that it’s something that families are going to want and expect and hope for in funeral services. So even if everybody can attend, even if there’s one or two people that might not be able to attend, or even people that, you know, can’t get the day off of work or whatever the case might be. So I think live streaming will, we’ll be here to stay. And we hope we hope it is obviously cause we have a great solution, but I think one interesting thing with COVID. So, you know, if we could have gone back seven years when we started the company and known that COVID would happen and that the changes that have happened would occur, we would have built exactly what we’ve built, which is really cool. We didn’t know. I mean, obviously we had no idea, but we’ve built the exact product that’s needed for right now. And that’s been really rewarding to see. COVID has changed technology from a nice-to-have into a must-have. Families are expecting this and we’re seeing funeral homes beginning to realize, you know what, technology can help. There are people out there who can help us better meet the needs of a changing consumer. So we do everything online. We do our taxes, we buy stuff online. Funeral homes can use technology to help in the funeral planning process and with Gather it doesn’t replace the funeral home by any stretch. It’s keeping the funeral home at the center of that relationship.
Joey:
That’s great. Yeah. You guys are great enhancer of that relationship.
Heather:
Sure. Yeah. And Joey, before we move on to that last question, Zach, is there anything else that you wanted to say about Gather or about the company? How many people work there? Anything like that?
Zach:
Yeah. so we’re at about 10 people and we’ll probably double within the next few months. So we have some exciting announcements coming up in the next few weeks to months about just some things that we’re launching in some business news and stuff like that. So it’s an exciting time at Gather. We are probably going to double the size of our development team so we can build even more features faster. We’re expanding our support team to continue to provide the level of support that we’re accustomed to. And then I’ll just say one thing, we talked about the support side of things and the training. So part of our DNA is we don’t want to put on the funeral homes plate. So what we do is we completely streamline and automate the onboarding process. So when a funeral home signs up with gatherer on the case management side, we can import all of their old case data. We can get everything set up for them. So from day one, Gather is customized to them. So it’s not a six month or 18 month process. We can do that in as little as three days where it’s fully customized to them. So that’s an exciting part of what we’ve done. We have a whole process on the back end to figure that out. But it’s been rewarding to see.
Heather:
Yeah, that’s something that we’ve learned too, is that, that really high touch, not making more work for the funeral director is an important piece of the puzzle.
Zach:
Yeah. Yeah. They’ve got more important things to do.
Joey:
Exactly. so this is our last question and this is the question we ask everybody. So, what is the biggest you’ve learned since serving in this industry or profession?
Zach:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And I love that you, you phrase it as serving and we view it that way. It’s a service, you know, we’re trying to serve the industry. We don’t want to disrupt, there’s some technology companies out there that want to disrupt the funeral industry and kind of cut out the funeral home and it’s direct-to-consumer, we’re the exact opposite. So I’d say the thing that we’ve learned the most me personally is how good funeral directors are. It’s not an easy industry. It’s not an easy profession. Funeral directors wake up every day and they take a portion of their happiness and their contentment. And they sacrifice a little bit of that to sit with a family that’s grieving. To be that shoulder to cry on and that’s commendable, you know, it’s rewarding I’m sure for funeral directors to be able to be in that position and rewarding for us as well. So I would just say that funeral directors are at their heart. They’re good people. They’re in it for the right reason. One thing we always ask, you know, directors, and especially when I was first starting the company is why are you a funeral director? And almost without exception, they would have a story of when I was 14, this happened, or, you know, this is the experience I had. This is why I do it. It’s not an easy job. A lot of times it’s a thankless job. But funeral directors are good. And the other thing I would say is the power of helping people. That’s our mission statement. We want to help people. And I think if you show up to work every day and you’re just a certain mentality and you want to help people eventually over time, if you work hard enough, it always comes back to you. So we, we’re excited to continue to help people. We have some exciting announcements, like I said, coming up. But at the heart of everything we’re doing, it’s we want to help people. We want to help funeral homes because they’re good people and they’re helping other people.
Joey:
Very well said that message of helping others is really important, especially now how life is these days. You know, we could all use a little bit of support for each other. So I think that’s very well said. So those are all the questions we have. Thank you so much, Zach. We really appreciate your time. And thanks for joining us this week on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. We’ll be posting this video on our blog, on our YouTube channel and on our Facebook feed. And we’ll be back with another show soon. So definitely check back in with us. If you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone you’d like to hear from in an interview add it in the comments down below and be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com. Have a great day. Thank you so much.
Heather:
Yeah, thanks Zach. We really appreciate it.
Zach:
Likewise.
