With roughly 2,000 families to serve each year across Washington, Diego Patlan (CEO, LFD, Embalmer) and his team at Weeks’ Funeral Homes needed one system that could travel with his funeral directors, keep distant families in the loop, and pull back the curtain on a profession many still find intimidating. Gather became that system.

Case Study Overview

• Customer Name: Weeks’ Funeral Homes
• Location: Seattle, WA
• Using Gather Since: 2024
• Uses Gather For: Case Management, Integrated Website Design, KeepTrack, LiveStreaming

The Story of Weeks Funeral Homes

Weeks’ Funeral Homes has been part of Western Washington for multiple generations. It began with Dwayne Weeks in Enumclaw, who got his start in the industry and then had the opportunity to buy the funeral home. From that single location, the business grew – first to Buckley, then outward – before passing to a second generation of Dwayne’s sons, Russ and Doug Weeks.

What the family built along the way is a reputation: high-quality, family-focused, family-oriented service for the families they serve and right for the community around them. As the decades passed and other family-owned funeral homes reached a crossroads about whether the next generation would take over the business, that reputation opened a door. Rather than see those legacies handed to corporations, Weeks was invited to carry them forward – taking on multiple family funeral homes across the region and growing it into the eight-location group it is today, serving roughly 2,000 families a year.

Helping lead that group today is Diego Patlán, who has been part of this profession since he was 16 and licensed since 19. His own path into funeral service started with a summer job his grandfather, a Catholic deacon, arranged at a Los Angeles funeral home. Handed the keys to a van and a fresh license, Diego spent that summer chasing down doctors for certificates, delivering flowers, and, by summer’s end, assisting with removals. He was hooked.

That belief – that funeral service is a calling before it’s a job – still shapes how he hires and how he runs the business. “Beyond qualifications, one of the biggest things I’ll ask is: what’s your story? Why?” he says. “Because it’s a calling. This is not an industry for just anyone.”

The Challenge

Families aren’t in one place anymore – and neither is the work.

Diego’s biggest operational challenge is one that every modern funeral home faces: families are spread out, and so are the demands on his team. The children of a decedent may live in different states, or even different countries. Regulations keep growing, cultural expectations vary from family to family, and new disposition options have appeared that didn’t exist when Diego started – each one something his funeral directors have to understand and explain well.

Serving eight locations multiplies the problem. Funeral directors sometimes move between sites during the day, and the old reality of paper files meant a case could stall the moment the right folder was in the wrong building. Coordinating cooler space, prep facilities, and crematories across the group meant constantly answering the question of where capacity – and where each person in their care – actually was.

There’s also a trust barrier baked into the profession itself. Funeral service is still, in Diego’s words, “considered quite taboo,” and that distance can breed distrust. Families occasionally arrive anxious about the most basic things – including where their loved one is.

On top of it all, Weeks’ is not the least expensive provider in its markets – so every arrangement has to visibly demonstrate value rather than feel like a basic service with add-ons tacked on.

Why Gather?

Weeks’ Funeral Homes went live with Gather over two years ago, and what stood out first was how naturally families could move through the process on their own. The family-facing flow is intuitive enough that even less tech-literate relatives can open a document and be walked straight through it – clearing exactly the kind of roadblock that used to keep a case from moving forward.

Diego also values that Gather is a single, connected funeral home platform rather than a patchwork of tools, and that the product continues to evolve based on what funeral homes actually tell the team.

The Results

Since switching from their old vendor stack to Gather, Weeks’ Funeral Homes has enjoyed a single platform that travels with their team, keeps families involved throughout every service, and moves paperwork (and payments) faster. Here are some specific wins they’ve experienced:

Diego also values that Gather is a single, connected funeral home platform rather than a patchwork of tools, and that the product continues to evolve based on what funeral homes actually tell the team.

Paperwork That Travels

The single biggest win, Diego says, has been getting paperwork done when families are scattered. Because the flow is so easy to follow, families receive documents, open them, and complete them without hand-holding – removing a roadblock that used to stall arrangements and helping the team meet families’ expectations far faster.

Funeral Directors Can Pick Up Any Case, Anywhere

With everything tracked in one place across all eight locations, staff who move between sites can jump in and keep things moving without hunting for a physical file. Even the first call from a family can be kicked off on the spot – from a phone or a laptop, day or evening.

Pulling Back The Funeral Service Curtain For Families

Weeks’ sets Gather up on the big screen in most of its arrangement rooms, so families are part of the process instead of watching a professional work behind a monitor. In an industry Diego notes is still “considered quite taboo,” anything that pulls that curtain back – and takes away a little of the distrust that comes from the unknown – is, in his words, “a net positive for our families.”

Merchandise Families Can Actually Navigate

With two primary urn providers and thousands of options between them, choosing used to mean digging through multiple catalogs. Now, a funeral director can apply a filter and turn 2,000 urn options into a list of 5-10 blue urns in seconds – and even integrate the selection through their website so a relative in another state can weigh in without ever leaving the loop. Gather offers more transparency for families and simultaneously creates more value for funeral homes.

Faster, Cleaner Payments

Secure online payment lets a relative paying from out of state see line-by-line what they’re covering, without the awkward over-the-phone credit-card exchange. Because payment flows through the same system as the contract, there’s no separate step to chase down – and it syncs live into QuickBooks Online.

Stronger Obituary Page Engagement

Gather’s Remember Pages render beautifully on mobile, tablet, and desktop, make photo sharing easy, and support live streaming for the locations that use it. Diego notes that the memory prompts (like “What’s your favorite memory?”) clearly inspire people, with pages regularly drawing dozens to hundreds of comments. The team is even trialing a rollable 32-inch display at one location, showing a person’s memorial page full-screen at services – a modern take on the guest book that visitors consistently notice.

Multi-Location Analytics

For Diego personally, the analytics matter most. With eight locations, seeing performance across all of them in a single view is invaluable, and the QuickBooks sync keeps financial numbers up to date, from payments to written contracts. A self-described “nerd,” he even feeds Gather data into Power BI dashboards – though the built-in analytics alone are plenty useful.

Simplified Chain of Custody Tracking

Through KeepTrack, Diego can quickly see exactly where every decedent in their care is and coordinate cooler, prep, and crematory space across all physical locations.

Support Your Staff With Gather

The clearest endorsement, Diego says, comes from his own funeral directors – the people whose days get easier or harder based on the tools they’re handed.

And when he’s asked what advice he’d give someone entering the profession, his answer explains why a tool that keeps families visible and involved fits how he thinks about the work in the first place.

Join Diego and 4,000+ other funeral professionals unifying their locations, serving families better, and getting time back. Schedule a discovery session with one of our licensed funeral directors to get a free quote for Gather today.