By Joey Haas
Video transcript of our interview with Mark Canale and Charli Lynn Peters from Canale Tonella Funeral Home
Heather:
Welcome, and thanks for joining us on Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips, and Technology. In these videos, we chat with leaders in the profession, discuss marketing trends and technology innovation, and talk about 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.
Heather:
And today our guests are Mark Canale and Charli Lynn Peters from Canale Tonella Funeral Home. And they’re here to talk a little bit about what they’ve been doing with their firm. So welcome you guys. Glad you’re here. If you want to start off, just tell us a little bit about who you are and about your business and your community.
Mark:
Sure. Well I’m Mark, Charli here, and we have three locations we’re located in Marquette, Gwinn and Ishpeming, Michigan. And I’ve been the owner of the funeral home since 1986, so 34 years now. I bought out the grandson of the founder who began the funeral business in Marquette in 1893. Still I’m 63 years old. And I have no plans on retiring yet.
Heather:
You guys have been there for a long time. And what’s your role Charli?
Charli:
I’m a licensed funeral director with Mark. I started with him in 2014. I’m originally from Munising, so close to home. So I’ve always lived in the UP. So pretty much everyday tasks. I’m a licensed funeral director. And I do a lot of the secretarial work here to with the funeral home.
Joey:
Gotcha. So when pandemic restrictions began in March, many funeral homes were using video and I know that that’s something that’s been going well for you guys at Canale. So could you describe what video services you offer and what participation looks like?
Mark:
Certainly. Well, we we weren’t really doing much online or live streaming until the pandemic hit, but immediately thereafter about toward the end of March and we weren’t having any funerals at all because the governor just didn’t allow that in Michigan here, we started getting requests from families that they just didn’t want to prolong it any longer. They knew that there could only be 10 people or less in the funeral home, or even at a church for that matter. And they said, do you have live streaming available. And at that point we did not. So we were hot on the track to find out a company that we could work with. And we looked at one that would come and equip our chapel with two or three cameras and investigated them a little bit. But realizing that a lot of our families are still very well churched and they want to have the service in the church or at a graveside, we knew that we couldn’t take those cameras out of the building with us. So actually I don’t know if it was just a divine intervention maybe, but we, we reached out or, or a company called Gather reached out to us. And they have a product that they sent us. It’s a tablet that communicates with a camera, a tripod, and we can basically take it anywhere we go. And so we could use it here in the building. We could use it at any church. We could use it outside and we’ve used it thus far in all three applications. But the problem we ran into with that is that it needs to connect obviously to the internet in order for it to work. Now it will record without going live stream and we could upload it later, but the families that we were serving wanted it to be live stream, and problem, we ran into some of the churches gave us, you know, their password for their WiFi and their connection stream was so slow that we were having huge problems. So a friend of mine said, well, why don’t you go to Verizon and pick out a hotspot and have your own hotspot? It’s, you know, it’s pretty good connection and try that. Well, the first time wouldn’t, you know, we tried, it is with a family of the former wife of the former president of the university here. The husband was in Florida at a hundred years old, could not make the graveside service. And two of his daughters could not make it. And they wanted it, they wanted to watch it live. So we connected with that hotspot through Verizon and it was flawless. I mean, it was, it was incredible reception and everyone was watching it all across the US and from that point on, we don’t trust any church Wifi has any longer.
Heather:
That’s a great, that’s a great solution. And did you pick Verizon specifically because they’re a good well-known carrier in your area? I know the UP’s kind of remote. Yeah.
Mark:
Well, we’re very remote and it’s difficult to come into a good reception in a lot of areas, but Verizon and AT&T are the big players, actually, they’re the only two players. Actually Spectrum just joined on that. They offer cell-service now, but Verizon is who we’ve used here as a company for our staff for all of our connections for several years. So that’s who we decided to stay with, so to speak.
Heather:
Yeah. So a funeral homes in different areas, were looking to do this, they might, they would be able to do the same thing with a different carrier. I’m pretty sure to sell that same problem. That’s what a great solution. So can you talk a little bit about like the video cameras that you use? Is it just the iPad and how do you set that up?
Charli:
Ultimately the camera that we receive it’s, it’s pretty small. So it’s very portable. Everything that we have been sent can be actually carried in a small little case. So it’s pretty compact. We carry the tripod with us and the camera mounts to the top and it has a microphone that will connect to the back of it just to enhance the audio. And then everything is ran off of a tablet, a Samsung tablet. So when you start your broadcasting from the tablet itself, and really the camera’s only turned on, so you need that connection to sync with the camera, ultimately with the tablet, for it to work.
Heather:
Gotcha. And does that stream onto Facebook or is there, is it through Gather?
Charli:
It’s through Gather. They provide us a website designated to our funeral home. So from there we can create a a hyperlink to submit into an obituary or put it on our website online there, and you can click on there and it’ll drop you off right to the live streaming where it’s going to be available.
Joey:
Okay. So you guys talked a little bit earlier about how families wanted that live stream option. And do you, could you talk a little bit about how, like, what families have said about this new video option in general and kind of general community feedback?
Mark:
Well, it’s all, it’s all been positive. We’re told almost immediately after the service, the family member will come up to either Charli or myself or Jerry our other director. And tell us that they’re getting even texts during the service on their cell phones saying that it was coming in loud and clear. And there were no hesitations in the delivery of it and that people were watching it from several different states and they were very pleased. They, they felt as though they were right there because with Gather, the camera has a wide angle view. And so they can see three, four different things like a once, like in the Catholic church, they could see the casket in the center aisle. You see the pulpit where the priest or family member delivers a eulogy from the altar, and we can adjust it so that they can even see people into the first few. So it’s, it’s been very well received. And as far as pricing goes, the costs from Gatherer is every time we do a live feed is $80. And they told us that funeral homes typically charge anywhere from $150 to offer that service and some funeral homes go as high as $400. We chose the $150 option. So they are compensated and then we get a little return as far as the investment we have in their equipment, which they overnighted to us because we needed in very short order here when we initially started with them. What about you, Charli? Want to add anything?
Charli:
Like Mark said, I’m pretty much always just been positive feedback. We, I would say, you know, even before the pandemic, people had brought up live streaming and then for me personally, family, I had worked with towards the end of June, they were pretty much the ones that really got us kind of on board with the whole live streaming because we needed something that was going to be reliable. So everybody’s been really happy so far with it.
Heather:
That’s great. Do you anticipate, you’ll continue with this even as the pandemic wanes when we get a vaccine?
Mark:
Probably for the rest of my working career, at least.
Heather:
So the pandemic has caused some families to pull back from having services. Can you talk a little bit about what impact you have you think that has on those who are grieving? Like, what is the, why is it important to still have a celebration, even if it’s different than it might’ve been before we had this time of COVID?
Charli:
Yeah, I think the pandemic has caused delayed grieving to an extent. And what I’ve noticed is that a lot of families kind of go back and forth. I think sometimes if you wait too long, then a service won’t happen. A lot of families they’ll say, well, let’s give it some time. And then it kind of drifts off where they, they just don’t end up having anything at all. So I think right now it’s really a matter of convenience and just kind of getting the closure that people need. So the live stream has been like the best option for that. So you can still go along with the whole service even with limited numbers, but everybody is still able to watch, which I think is going to help some a lot of families seem to be interested in the whole live streaming concept.
Mark:
I was going to just say that prior to our doing live stream and just use this as an example, we’ve had a few families that we have pre-arrangement made with far in advance and they want a visitation, a funeral and burial for, before we could live stream, a lot of them just chose a graveside service because we could have more people outside and we could have inside. And so they, they didn’t get what they initially bargained for, so to speak. So we were making refunds to a lot of those families because we didn’t provide all of the services that they initially wanted. So with, with Gatherer or whatever company being able to live stream, they basically can, we can follow through with everything that they want.
Heather:
And honor those requests that were made years in advance that people wanted.
Mark:
That’s true.
Heather:
That’s terrific. That’s terrific. Yeah, and it sounds like even, even live stream, live streaming services are that important step to get the grieving process started and for many people just moving forward, which is important. So are there any other changes or challenges you’ve faced recently and found interesting solutions to that you’d like to share with fellow funeral directors?
Charli:
I would just say mostly just keeping up with the state, you know, rules and regulations. We had a week there where our governor went back down to limit to 10 and we already had funerals scheduled for the rest of the week. So you can’t really, you know, you get one chance to do something, right. And you can’t really tell a family now that we can’t, you know, go along with your wishes. And especially after everything has been, you don’t notified to newspapers and on the website. So just kind of adapting to change. But I think as funeral directors, you, nothing is set in stone. Sometimes you’re, you’re adapting as you go with your job most of the time. So I think just the number changes and you don’t try to maintain the rules and regulations and keeping our families, you know, happy, satisfied, and performing their your wishes.
Heather:
You’re back to 10 only?
Mark:
Yeah. And is it 50 outside or it was, it was 200 outside. I can’t recall.
Charli:
Might be up to 200, and then the churches they’ll kind of have their own jurisdiction and idea of how many they could have in the church, especially the Catholic churches up here. So I would say a lot of them up here are close to 80 to a hundred, I would say roughly. But we haven’t had, the numbers haven’t really been that high right now, regardless.
Mark:
But that’s looked at it differently. When you have that many in the church, we refer to it as a religious service or religious gathering. So we go by what, their number. And if they’re having a mass, that is a religious service. So we are tweaking things a little bit, but we’re certainly in a lot of our churches, they’re more than six feet apart. So works out pretty well.
Heather:
Go ahead, Joey, do you want to do the next one?
Joey:
Sure. So we’ve got one final question that we ask everybody. And that is what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since serving in this profession?
Mark:
Well, for me and I, I’ve been licensed now 41 years, but working in the funeral industry almost 50, I tell our staff that we have one chance to get it right, so that there are no rehearsals in the funeral business. So the way that we treat a family will affect them for a lifetime, whether positive or negative. And we want it always to be a positive experience. And so basically no rehearsals, as far as I’m concerned. What about you, Charli?
Charli:
Oh, I would say pretty much like Mark had said that you don’t have rehearsal for funerals. So ultimately, you know, getting it right the first time is what you need to do, so yeah.
Joey:
Very nice, that ties in nicely with the video services you guys provide and, and making sure that that part of the services is offered for families. Like you said, since you just get one chance to do it. So that’s great. So that is actually all the questions we have for you guys. Thank you so much, Mark and Charli, 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 channels, and you’ll be able to access it on your Facebook feed. And we’ll be back with another show next week. So check back in with us soon, if you have any topics you’d like to see discussed or someone you’d like to see interviewed, add it in the comments down below and be sure to visit our website at funeralinnovations.com. Have a great day. Thanks so much you guys.
