The client and its customers
Compare Funerals is a funeral planning business serving English-speaking expatriates living in Spain. Its customers are mostly over 50, planning ahead for themselves or a partner, often far from family and dealing with arrangements in another country.
Sales happen through advisers who contact enquirers and explain the options before anyone commits.
The existing enquiry process
Enquiries were generated mainly through Meta (Facebook and Instagram) lead advertising and passed into the business's CRM for advisers to call.
The challenge
Advertising was producing enquiries, but the value was being lost after the lead arrived. The issues were the familiar ones for appointment-led businesses: enquiries of uneven quality, delays before first contact, many leads with no recorded outcome, and sales data that didn't connect cleanly back to the campaigns that produced them.
Advertising and lead management strategy
We tested different Meta lead capture forms and creative, and measured lead quality, not just cost per lead. Qualification criteria were agreed with the people making the calls, so unsuitable enquiries could be screened out early and advisers could focus on genuine prospects.
AI-assisted calling and qualification
AI-assisted calling was introduced to make prompt initial contact with new enquiries, confirm interest, ask the agreed qualification questions and identify the right next step, with a route through to a person.
Appointment booking and adviser handover
Suitable enquirers were booked into conversations with advisers, with the qualification context passed across so the adviser started the call informed.
CRM integration and follow-up
CRM automation was set up so leads arrived tagged by source, appointment statuses were tracked, and enquirers who weren't ready were followed up rather than forgotten. Sales were tracked back to the enquiries that produced them.
Results
We publish results only once each figure has been checked against the client's own records, the time periods compared are stated, and the client has approved publication. This section will show the verified baseline and the figures after implementation.
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Average sales cycle | Being verified | Being verified |
| Lead response time | Being verified | Being verified |
| Contact rate | Being verified | Being verified |
| Qualified lead rate | Being verified | Being verified |
| Appointment booking rate | Being verified | Being verified |
| Cost per customer | Being verified | Being verified |
Where results improve, we'll be clear about what we observed and what we infer. Several changes were made together, so no single improvement is attributed to AI alone.
Lessons for other appointment-led businesses
- Measure lead quality, not just lead cost. The cheapest form fill is expensive if nobody can reach the person who filled it in.
- Agree what “qualified” means with the people making the calls. Marketing and sales need one definition.
- Speed of first contact matters. Interest is highest straight after an enquiry.
- Every lead needs an outcome.An enquiry with no recorded result can't be followed up, and can't teach the advertising anything.
- Connect sales back to campaigns. Budgets should be set on cost per customer.
What this work taught us
This work shaped Next Chapter Media. The advertising was rarely the whole problem. Much of the opportunity sat between the enquiry and the adviser's conversation, the part many agencies don't take responsibility for. So that's the part we built the system around.