Ghosting at Work: The Silent Customer Service Killer

Ghosting used to be something we joked about in the context of dating. Now it is quietly becoming a normal part of doing business, and if I’m honest, that really worries me.

I see it in multiple directions. Team members disappear from the roster without explanation. Candidates vanish halfway through recruitment. Suppliers stop responding mid-project. And consultants like me can spend hours putting together thoughtful, tailored proposals only to send them off into what feels like a black hole, never hearing another word.

No acknowledgement. No feedback. Not even a quick “thanks, but this isn’t the right time”.

Now before anyone jumps in with the usual response, yes, I understand that people are busy. Priorities change. Budgets shift. Projects stall. That is the reality of business. What I struggle with is the growing acceptance that silence is somehow an acceptable response. Because when ghosting becomes normalised in the way we communicate with each other at work, it does not stay contained to one moment or one relationship. It soon becomes part of the culture.

And culture, as we know, always shows up in the customer experience.

We often talk about ghosting as if it is only something employees do. A team member stops replying to messages, misses a shift, and eventually disappears altogether. Leaders shake their heads and blame the latest generation entering the workforce. But the more I observe it, the more I see that ghosting rarely starts with employees. It often starts much higher up the chain.

It happens when a candidate spends time preparing for interviews and never hears back. It happens when team members raise concerns and receive silence instead of a response. It happens when someone is asked to invest time and energy into a proposal or a project and the other side simply disappears. None of these moments feel dramatic on their own, but they do send a very clear message about how communication and respect operate within a business.

And people notice.

When leaders avoid uncomfortable conversations, team members quickly learn that silence is easier than honesty. When businesses stop responding to suppliers, those suppliers become less invested in supporting them. When communication becomes inconsistent internally, it eventually shows up externally as well. You cannot create a culture of strong customer experience on the outside if the communication inside the organisation is built on avoidance.

This is exactly why the idea of an inside out customer experience matters so much. As Andy Goram and I discussed on The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast this week, we can spend all the time we like mapping customer journeys, redesigning service processes and training teams on how to create memorable moments, but if the internal culture quietly tolerates ghosting, those efforts will only ever go so far.

Because customer experience is not delivered by processes. It is delivered by people.

And people carry the culture they experience at work into every interaction they have with customers, suppliers and colleagues. If the internal experience is one where communication disappears the moment something becomes uncomfortable, it should not surprise us when employees start behaving in the same way.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that the solution is not complicated. It is simply uncomfortable.

It takes less than a minute to acknowledge someone’s effort and close the loop on a conversation. A short message saying “Thank you for putting this together. We have decided not to move forward right now” is often all that is required. That small act of communication does something incredibly powerful. It shows respect for the other person’s time, it maintains the relationship, and it reinforces a culture where people matter.

In a world where ghosting is becoming increasingly common, those small moments of professionalism and courtesy stand out far more than we might think.

And perhaps that is where the inside out approach to customer experience really begins. Not with grand strategies or complex frameworks, but with the everyday behaviours that signal how we treat people inside our organisations. When communication is open, respectful and consistent internally, team members carry that same mindset into their interactions with customers. When silence becomes the default response, the opposite tends to happen.

So maybe the question is not why employees are ghosting workplaces. Maybe the better question is whether ghosting has already become part of the culture we are creating.

Because if it has, the customer experience will eventually reflect it.

Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/4sYDe7FUOug

Listen to the podcast here: https://www.michellepascoe.com/The-Michelle-Pascoe-Hospitality-Podcast