This column on ghosting appeared on Ziptone on June 28, 2024
Recently, this conversation took place between two friends: one parked in the center of Amsterdam because of a dinner party – there are cheaper hobbies – and used Yellowbrick’s app for payment. A few days later, she received a fine from the City of Amsterdam of more than 80 euros because she had not paid a parking fee around eight o’clock in the evening. “But I had that app on,” she spoke irritated, “so I assume everything is okay.”
The Yellowbrick service desk employee suspected that Friend herself had “accidentally” set an end time around seven in the evening, and immediately rushed to say that fines were not refundable. Friend was sure she had not done this, and after some insistence, they looked into the backend anyway. What was the issue? A setting in the app’s backend had caused the parking action to be terminated, while the car was then happily parked on the canal for an additional two hours. In Amsterdam, that equals a guaranteed fine.
“It still said that if I had any questions, I could definitely contact them, but I never had another reply. I sent them three e-mails. But they just don’t respond. I can’t call, so I’m stuck with this fine. I really hate the ghosting. Yellowbrick, you make me sick.”
Ghosting is a tactic
Ghosting is “the sudden termination of all communication and avoidance of contact with another person, without any clear warning or explanation and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate.” Victims of ghosting feel confused, pained and in some specific cases sick, but the reasons for turning on “booth ignore” are mainly due to the incompetence and powerlessness of ghoster themselves. No appetite for the confrontation, insufficient communication skills to conduct the exit conversation, fear of the other person’s reaction, protecting other’s feelings, technical problems, as well as “a new normal.” After all, many apps and online messaging channels offer an option to block other users, or delete one’s own profile, and thus it becomes normalized to stop communication with one click if you feel that need.
Harmful and effective
Ghosting is an effective and harmful technique. Effective because it easily achieves the intended goal of stopping communication. But it is highly damaging to the relationship between the ghoster and hosted. Relationship expert John Gottman describes four communication styles that damage or even end relationships: criticism, contempt, reacting defensively, and “stonewalling”: refusing (after disagreement) to communicate with or acknowledge the partner’s presence.
If you benefit from the relationship between yourself and another person, it is not a good idea to unilaterally cut off communication from one moment to the next. People are social creatures and need other people to survive. Similarly, companies and organizations have little reason to exist without customers. Thus, they actually benefit greatly from investing in the good relationship with customers.
Non-destructive customer contact
The simplest way is to make sure the product or service matches how customers want to use it and that it works well. But that sometimes goes wrong; in the end, it’s still human work. That’s where the customer contact department plays an important role. By making sure a complaint is handled properly, employing non-destructive communication strategies, choosing appropriate channels, and truly putting the customer first, customer service can guide even the sickestcases back to a positive end result. One customer may not amount to much compared to the entire customer base, but any complaint expert can explain to you in great detail that a dissatisfied customer affects a larger audience of (potential) customers than a satisfied customer will.
So why would companies still choose to unilaterally end communications mid-conversation with customers? There are 3 options: incompetence, impotence, or a customer contact policy aimed at torpedoing customer relationships. From a position of being confused, sick and pained, it is sometimes hard to realize that the other person acted from incompetence or powerlessness, and only one option remains: the other person is just an asshole.
Take a break (from ghosting)
The latter option may be true, but it is much more likely that a lot is going on emotionally with the ghoster. They feel overwhelmed by emotions, are incompetent or powerless to deal with them, and end up in a fight, flight or freeze situation. Cutting off contact is the easiest way out of that situation. Effective and harmful.
Is such a situation irreversible? Gottman has tips for that, too: take a 20-minute break from the conversation, during which you distract yourself and calm your emotions. For example, by listening to music, reading, or doing some physical exercises. It is important, however, that you agree on that break with your conversation partner. After the break, you resume the conversation with different energy and voila, the chances of coming out together are much higher. Those twenty minutes are ideal, but not sacred. More important is that you finish the conversation. Even if months have passed.
In other words, don’t act like a dick and don’t abandon your clients halfway through a conversation.
