Service Corporation International Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great coworkers and work life balance

Cons – Not sure of future career opportunities

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Service Corporation International full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Excellent teaching environment giving plenty of classes to employees

Cons – NO time off. You will work until you have no more work in you. Pay rates are very low for the non-management workers.

Advice to Senior Management – Get in the trenches with non-management staff and revisit the work schedules. You may soon realize that they are all underpaid.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – good materials and good products.

Cons – change commision plans too often.. way too many meetings

Advice to Senior Management – get back in touch with reality.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good perks & benefits, job security

Cons – heavy pressure to sell, management overpaid and out of touch with field.

Advice to Senior Management – Come see what your subordinates do before you make decisions

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than a year

Pros – GREAT perks if you make the inflated sales goals. Only a handful people in the area ever reached those levels.

No expense spared on providing fine dining to counselors when the team makes the location goal.

Great people to work with- top down! I loved my boss!

Families and clients are the real gem of this line of work.

Cons – Terrible hours- plan to work every day, all day. Even with 9-12 hour shifts, you're made to feel like you are never doing enough to make sales. Weekends, holidays, nights and mornings I worked 29 our of 30 days per month.

Terrible base pay. At $8/hr, even if you make your sales goal, the pay is about $5 or less per hour. If you are well established or have a community of people (a church for example) you can draw from, making any real money is impossible. You need at least 5 yrs to build a client base and even then you still have to go door to door, make cold calls and find leads. Every month, the cycle starts back at $0.

I was told that "There is a window of time where the family is still grieving and that is when we need to push the family into buying their own end of life insurance policy". VERY high pressure sales with little monetary reward. This is a tough business.

Plan to be outside in snow, sleet and rain. Weather does not matter when a burial is scheduled.

Never felt like I had enough hours in the day to both generate leads AND perform every other task expected of me. They want a lot of documentation of what you are doing to make your sales goal and counselors are responsible to research information, handle client requests that pull them away from making sales. On average, 40% of my day was spent on non-sales focused tasks.

Company lacks employee development and opportunity for advancement. I wanted to move into a funeral director position and was told if I chose to enroll in funeral director school, I would be fired and not even considered for a driver position or other role with more flexible hours within the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Consider price matching if you want to keep your brand relevant. You will always lose sales when the funeral home next door offers the exact same policy at 25% less cost. Open opportunity for your locations to be successful.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Working with families is rewarding. Met a lot of great families who truly appreciated me, as I did their trust and confidence. Location manager great, as are some other local employees. Can be very lucrative for those in sales.

Cons – As others have said, there is a COMPLETE disconnect between upper mgmt. and the field locations. Those who "schmooz" are rewarded and acknowledged openly to other managers and co-workers, while those who have truly shown they care are overlooked. Much money is wasted on expenses by managers that are not always justified, but can be "written off". They go by Dignity Memorial; their values, benefits to families and mission statement are in the right place, but employees are not treated in a dignified way. TOO focused on making money!!!!! Sales goals are often unrealistic, and Family Counselors are expected to complete ridiculous amounts of paperwork and other tasks that take away from prospecting and selling! Base pay taken away in exchange for a min. wage pay that will be deducted from counselors' checks after a bonus is achieved. They push for referrals from families who have just lost someone. At times, this may be appropriate as pre-arranging is certainly a smart idea, but referrals are really about additional sales. This is NOT a 40 hr per week job! The upper mgmt. are slime balls who don't care about their
employees. Also, the admin workers are NOT paid appropriately for all the work they do!!

Advice to Senior Management – Go on "Undercover Boss", and put yourselves in the shoes of those working on the front line. See how exhausted you are after a busy week, having made no commissions because the family you are helping had already Pre-arranged everything years ago, as probably 75% of them have. Counselors STILL have to spend just as much time with these families, and rightfully so; they deserve it. However, realize how often this happens in relation to making a sale. Stop threatening Sales Mgrs and Counselors about not meeting sales goals that are TOO HIGH to begin with, and are very difficult to meet. Lastly, give counselors credit for the interment/professionalservice fees due before a service. Just because a family has had a death occur, this doesn't mean am automatic sale! Counselors still work their butts off with "at-need" familes too!!!!! APPRECIATE your employees with more than a thank you when they DO
achieve quota! Fix this situation before you lose many other dedicated employees!!!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Service Corporation International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Work with good people and help families

Cons – Underpaid for the work you do

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Service Corporation International part-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good starting sales carrier company

Cons – Pay poor and long hours

Advice to Senior Management – Base pay need be reasonable

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Compassionate, Caring and dedicated to treating employees and client families with the utmost respect and dignity

Cons – nothing bad about this company

Advice to Senior Management – Increase paid time off.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Service Corporation International full-time for more than a year

Pros – They will hire virtually anyone willing to work for minimum wage.

Cons – Ridiculously low pay; therefore they have a revolving door of inexperienced people who usually don't care about the industry or the families they're serving since they're just there for a minimum wage paycheck. All the management I worked with were completely out of touch with the community, the competition, the families served and the employees -- and happy to be so. They get rid of anyone who cares enough to object to their debilitating policies and procedures. They took our beautiful cluster of funeral homes in South Florida which were the gold standard nationwide, with an unblemished reputation, and pretty much ruined them. Their answer to anything is to raise prices. Service is very poor. They treat both employees and families with the same disregard. There was not an employee there who didn't come to bitterly regret the takeover of Alderwoods by SCI. Not a good place for true funeral professionals.

Advice to Senior Management – Get a backbone and fight for your employees and the families you are serving.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend