Goolsby Mortuary and Cremation Services, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been providing the highest quality of funeral services to families since 1977. While they’re happy with their growth and quality of care, they’ve only continued to enhance it even more since Erica Goolsby helped the rest of their team switch to Gather’s funeral home software. Learn more about Erica, the story of Goolsby Mortuary, and how Gather is helping expand the family’s legacy.

Case Study Overview

• Customer Name: Goolsby Mortuary and Cremation Services
• Location: Atlanta, GA
• Using Gather Since: 2021
• Uses Gather For: Case Management, Integrated Website Design, LiveStreaming

The Story of Goolsby Mortuary

While she originally pursued other career paths, Erica Goolsby eventually followed her family’s roots back to funeral service at their local funeral home in Atlanta. She helps manage the business and meets with families as one of the managing funeral directors while she attends mortuary school.

Erica, a third-generation funeral professional in her family, is excited to continue helping Goolsby Mortuary grow. They have served their community for 46 years and counting. The building was originally bought by Erica’s grandfather back in 1977, and it was then converted into a funeral home. Later, her parents met in mortuary school and had three kids who all went on to work in the death care industry.

Erica, who has grown up with nearly the entire funeral home staff, calls them the absolute foundation of the business and its purpose of serving others. Her impact on the family business includes embracing changes and adapting to new generations of families that walk through their doors. She is passionate about her work and providing quality end-of-life services for grieving families.

Goolsby Mortuary’s Challenges Before Gather

Part of embracing those new changes and modernizing operations for the funeral home involved getting started with Gather. Before Gather, Goolsby noted several different processes that were painstakingly inefficient with their old system. As a result, the administrative work was burning out her team and took time away from the families that Goolsby served.

• Lack of Organization and Efficiency: Before Gather, the funeral home experienced a flurry of trivial technical errors that impacted the entire staff’s overall organization and efficiency. The team felt ill-equipped to create a concise and easy-to-follow task checklist.
• Inability to Offer At-Home Arrangements: Erica, a big champion for at-home arrangements, noted that their previous system limited their ability to offer at-home arrangements to families who preferred to plan services in the comfort of their own homes.
• Inaccurate Contracts and Statements: The team often faced poor functionality when creating contracts with their old system, and found it difficult to navigate when trying to build accurate, detailed contracts for families.
• Outdated Website Experience: Goolsby Mortuary’s old website did not offer a direct integration with a case management platform to offer important features like one-click obituary publishing, an online payment center, and a digital GPL widget.
• Inability for Long-Distance Families to Watch Services: Several families requested a live stream or webcast of their loved one’s funeral services, but the team didn’t have a high-quality system they could use to offer those services.
• Uncomfortable Arrangement Conferences: Erica notes that sometimes the team lacked confidence during arrangement conferences because of the sheer emotion that comes with trying to help guide families through the loss of their loved ones, in addition to all of the other administrative tasks that they must work through with families. Their old processes were cumbersome, which could sometimes make interactions with families awkward.

How Gather Helped Goolsby Mortuary

Erica Goolsby noted a few specific ways that Gather has improved the process:

Scheduling and Managing Events With Ease

Erica noted that her team loves Gather’s two-way integration with Google Calendar, which allows her to easily schedule and manage all types of events for each case. She also likes the ability to add staff as guests and reserve resources to help eliminate double bookings or any other errors.

Streamlining Arrangement Conferences

Erica doesn’t have to spend as much time hand-writing letters and permits, handling miscommunications with families, or trying to keep track of pesky paperwork. Especially with customizable checklists that are generated for each case, Gather enables her team to spend more time on the things that matter most during services. This way she can spend time on the more important things with the families they serve. She says that now they can spend more time on the fine details because they are not worried about paperwork. Plus, with Gather, Goolsby Mortuary can back to at-home arrangements because they can plan services from anywhere with Gather’s mobile app and cloud-based software.

Fantastic User Interface and World-Class Support

Gather gives the team at Goolsby Mortuary more confidence when using software to aid during arrangement conferences because the platform is easy to navigate and learn. Additionally, Erica compliments the availability of Gather’s unlimited support as being a big help when it comes to training staff and assisting with more technical questions.

Compliant Contracts and Simpler Family Collaboration

Erica and her team can now quickly generate accurate, compliant contracts within literal seconds. Their logo and all important information are bundled in a digital signature packet that can instantly be signed by families. Case files are easily stored and unlimited for each case, so her team will always have a digital record if a family calls in with questions in the future.

Work Smarter With Gather

Erica Goolsby is a trailblazer in the world of death care – will you be next? Goolsby Mortuary has proven that while the new software is a big decision for any funeral home or cremation business, it is an investment that will pay dividends for years to come. Their team has successfully unlocked new efficiencies, new revenue streams, and new possibilities with cloud-based funeral home software that offers flexibility and continued innovation.

Book a demo with our team and learn how you can leverage Gather to streamline funeral arrangements, give your team better tools, create a better family experience, and take your funeral home to the next level.