Phone Systems for Funeral Homes

A funeral home's most important call usually comes at night. A hospice nurse or a family member calls to say someone has died, and the person on the other end needs to hear a calm voice, not a menu and not a voicemail beep. During the day the same line rings with "what time is the visitation," "where do we send flowers," and a physician's office about a death certificate, often while a director is sitting with a family making arrangements.

Cannon VoIP puts every first call in front of a person: after hours, the line follows the on-call director to their cell through the mobile app, with a backup if they do not answer. During the day, the AI receptionist can answer service times and directions from what you gave it, so arrangement conferences are not interrupted. Flat $34 per extension, no contracts, texting and transcription included.

First calls, service questions, and paperwork

Funeral home calls fall into three groups. First calls, which must reach a director right away at any hour. Questions about services, which are simple but constant in the days before a visitation: times, address, parking, livestream link, where to send flowers. And paperwork calls from physicians, medical examiners, cemeteries, churches and vital records offices, many of which still want a fax.

The first group is the one families remember. A director on call should not be carrying a separate cell, or forwarding the main line by hand every night and hoping they remembered to switch it back. The routing should do that on its own.

What we set up for funeral homes

Why funeral homes switch to Cannon VoIP

Flat $34 per extension per month, month to month, with texting and transcription included and no regulatory fees. A small family-owned home might run three or four extensions; directors on call use the app on their own phone without a second line.

Your number has been in obituaries, church bulletins and the phone book for decades. It ports for $15 per line, usually the next business day with about two minutes of downtime, and the old system keeps taking calls until the port completes. Within about an hour and a half of DFW Airport we install on-site for free, and we support funeral homes nationwide.

We answer our own phones. If something is wrong with the first-call routing at midnight, the engineers who built the system are the ones who fix it.

What a typical setup looks like

A typical funeral home runs office, two or three directors, and an administrator at $34 each. During business hours the main menu offers "to report a death" first, then "service times and directions," then the office. The first option rings every director at once. Service questions go to the AI receptionist ($65 per month, or free with 10 or more users) when the office is busy.

After hours, the first-call option follows the on-call director, steps to a backup, and falls back to Live Answering if nobody picks up. Everything else takes a transcribed message. Cloud eFax ($10 per month) handles death certificates and permits, and a $99 ATA keeps an old fax machine running if you want it.

Common questions from funeral homes