Answering Services for the Funeral Industry Overwhelmed by the Pandemic

Credit: connectingdirectors.com

For 40 years, Answering Services for Directors has exclusively served the funeral industry.  In 1972, Martin and Barbara Czachor decided to start a telephone answering business for local companies in the area surrounding their hometown of Glenolden, Pa. They are now a 200 employee company based in Media, Pa.

COVID-19 has brought Answering Services for Directors an onslaught of tragic phone calls on a scale they’ve never experienced. ASD call specialists were faced with phone call after phone call with far less turnaround time than ever before. On a blog post for the ASD website, ASD call specialists were asked to share their stories about answering phone calls from grieving family members during the month of April, when COVID-19 was hitting a peak.

One ASD call specialist wrote of having to turn away a devastated 19-year-old because the funeral home she was calling about was at capacity and could not take on any more clients.

ASD senior call specialist Christ Bevilacqua was one of four employees who handled the highest number of incoming calls during the COVID-19 pandemic. He dreaded the experience of having to turn away families desperately looking for a funeral home. “Some days, I didn’t even want to log in, but we were all they had and we all had to help,” Bevilacqua wrote.

ASD senior call specialist Janel Francis wrote of informing a grieving woman who had lost her loved one that a funeral home was not accepting new cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The woman responded by begging for her loved one not to be thrown in “The Pit” — the mass gravesite individuals were being placed in when they could no longer be stored in morgues.

Credit: ASD call specialists
myasd.com

ASD bilingual training specialist Myrna Russi has been part of the ASD team since 2006.

She wrote of taking a look at what it has been like to be a guiding hand “answering life’s most difficult calls” for ASD:

‘The funeral home is at capacity’ became a new normal for a minute; ‘How is the procession changing route in light of the protests?’ came next. We were there to answer 24/7, in the tradition of the carpenters turned “box makers” who’s industry was shaped by literal homes the community would come knocking at the door when someone passed, we were there to “answer that door”; in our case, modern lingo, answer the call. Personally, this left an impact when imagining all these families and community leaders, all coming to knock at the door of the funeral home at once.

She includes in her post a list of lessons learned from being a guiding hand to the Funeral Homes:

• Focus on common denominators when variables are in flux.
• What we do know and what we can do?
• Mourn every loss / count every victory.
• Let your voice be known. Many are looking for direction and yours might be the one that resonates.
• Individual Journeys moving forward, side by side.
• Finding strength when we can be unified holistically. The ongoing process of finding out what is most important to us.

ASD has confronted the mass tragedy by doubling down on their ethics and leading with compassion, care and attention.