Dealing with Customers That Ghost You 👻

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In this episode of the Customer Success Pro Podcast, Anika Zubair explores the phenomenon of customer ghosting, particularly during the Halloween season. She discusses the reasons why customers may go silent, the common mistakes made by customer success professionals, and effective strategies to re-engage ghosted customers. Anika shares personal anecdotes and emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs, setting clear expectations, and adapting communication styles. The episode concludes with actionable takeaways and a challenge for listeners to apply the discussed strategies.

Chapters
00:00 The Haunting of Customer Relationships
03:07 Understanding Customer Ghosting
05:37 Common Mistakes Leading to Ghosting
08:42 Communication Styles and Customer Engagement
11:46 Reviving Ghosted Customers
17:47 Strategies for Re-engagement

Connect with Anika Zubair:
Website: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikazubair/
CSM RevUP Academy: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/revup

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Haunting of Customer Relationships
• 3:07 Understanding Customer Ghosting
• 5:37 Common Mistakes Leading to Ghosting
• 8:42 Communication Styles and Customer Engagement
• 11:46 Reviving Ghosted Customers
• 17:47 Strategies for Re-engagement

Transcript

Anika Zubair (00:00.353)
Ever had a customer that just vanished? No reply to your emails, no one shows up to the meeting, you check Slack, you check their LinkedIn, and you even stalk their out of office and still nothing. It's like they ghosted you. It happens to the best of us, but when silence becomes the loudest part of your customer relationship, it's time to take a deeper look. And since it's spooky Halloween season,

What better time than to talk about how to deal with customers that ghost you? Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and today we are diving into a Halloween theme and we are going to go into the haunted side of customer success. And that's right, we are talking about how to deal with customers who ghost you.

The ones that just vanish mid-project, don't show up to quarterly business reviews and stop replying after onboarding. Or maybe they go radio silent right before a renewal. In this Halloween edition, I'm going to break down why customers end up ghosting you, the top mistakes I see made when you are ghosted, and how to win back your customers without sounding desperate.

And of course, I'm going to share a little bit of a spooky personal story about how a customer that I thought I lost forever eventually came back from the dead. And of course, I will leave you with a tangible takeaway and a weekly challenge so you can go away and prevent your customers from ghosting you. So grab a coffee, your broomstick, or maybe just a notebook.

And don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss a future episode. And if this episode ends up helping you, do you mind sharing it with your team or maybe drop a review below? I love hearing what's resonating with you. So please take the time to share the podcast. Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and welcome to the Customer Success Pro Podcast, your go-to space for real talk.

Anika Zubair (02:14.432)
expert advice and actionable insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award-winning strategist, CS coach and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs and CS leaders build the skills and the confidence to become revenue driving pros and scale world-class CS teams. So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination.

It's a journey and I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey. So join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks and strategies you can actually use. Some weeks I'll share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years. And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today.

So if you're ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in. And let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together.

Anika Zubair (03:28.142)
All right, let's get into it because this happens way more often than anyone likes to admit. A lot of CS pros beat themselves up when a customer stops responding. But honestly, ghosting isn't about you. Sometimes it's totally about the customer. But this is a big but. How you respond can actually make or break the relationship.

When a customer goes dark, it creates churn risk, it kills momentum, and it makes it really hard to deliver value. And when it becomes a pattern across multiple accounts, that's a red flag for your entire CS strategy. So if you've ever been sat there, refreshing your inbox, wondering, did I say something wrong to this customer? Or was that QBR too early? Or are they actually mad at me? Listen.

You are not alone, and this episode is a reminder that we all get ghosted. And even though it's spooky season, we are going to figure out the best way to make sure you're not ghosted again. So let's talk about what actually causes the spooky silence. So first of all, it's probably because you're a little bit too reactive, and you probably have heard this before, and...

If you're only reaching out to your customers when you need something like a meeting book because of a renewal signature, or maybe you need to train your customer on something new because they've disengaged, I'm sorry to say, booking meetings based on your needs is just going to result in your customer ghosting you even more. Because the one thing I can say is ghosting ends up being a lot of the time because a customer feels

like it's not worth their time. So you really do need to focus on them and what they need in order for them to stop ghosting you. But let's move into some other things that I see. First of all, another thing that I see that's super common is customers end up ghosting you because the value isn't inherently clear to them. In every single meeting that your customer attends, it might just feel like a check-in call instead of a strategy session.

Anika Zubair (05:47.956)
And if they start skipping the meetings or maybe saying we should have them less often, this is a clear sign that your strategy isn't working and checking in is not actually driving value for your customers. And you need to start to really understand what is going to actually drive value for them and what is going to make this call feel like a strategy session for your customers. Because your customers start to attend less and less of your calls.

and then eventually start ghosting you because they see like the call as work. They don't see it as a good use of their time. They just see it as a waste of time. All right, another mistake that I see, and honestly, I've been guilty of this, and I know this happens really often in customer success, is CS professionals end up waiting on one single stakeholder, whether it's your champion or your main product user. The number one reason people end up ghosting you is because

likely either your champion left or they're focused on a different project internally and you probably didn't build up enough relationships internally with your customer beyond that one person. And multithreading is extremely important in customer success. A lot of people don't realize that when a prospect comes and hits your website and they start demoing and using your product, there are multiple people within the organization that starts to demo and use your product. A sales person or an AE

is probably speaking anywhere to five to 10 people in a sales cycle. And you know what? They have all these details in your CRM and they are actually speaking to multiple stakeholders. But what I see happen way too often is CS professionals end up not nurturing all 10 of those contexts. Now, do all 10 need to be nurtured all the time? Of course not. No one has time for that over the course of a year.

But if you end up just building the relationship of the one customer or the one champion that you feel the most comfortable with, what's going to happen is that one person is going to go on vacation, they're going to get busy, they're going to end up moving to another department or organization, and then you're left hung out to dry. And it's no fault of your own.

Anika Zubair (07:59.512)
But if you start to actually build multi-threaded relationships with your customers, you are going to stop the ghosting before it starts. Because more times than not, your champion leaving is going to be the reason why your count goes cold and starts ghosting or not showing up to your calls. And another mistake that ends up happening as well that I know I've been guilty of, but I see it happen so often with my CSMs on my teams, is that they...

do not end up setting the right expectations with the customer upfront. Now, like I said, your sales team is probably speaking to five or 10 people. And I bet you even in your kickoff call or your handoff call that you have from sales to customer success, I bet that there's probably at least three or four people on that call from the customer side, maybe even more. I've had kickoff calls where there's been 10 people on a kickoff call. And what ends up happening on that call is you end up talking about the product.

and the outcomes and the roadmap and everything that you're going to do in onboarding, which is great. But what usually ends up happening is expectations get missed. And if you've ever said, if you've never said to your customer, hey, we're going to end up meeting monthly and here's what we're going to cover in each of our calls and this is how we're going to deliver value to you.

then it's easy for them to just focus on onboarding and the value they're going to get on onboarding. And then they totally forget about everything else that happens after onboarding. And it is your job to make sure that it's really clear to them what they can expect post onboarding, but also the cadence and the regularity of what the meetings are going to be. And if your customers start to drop off, it's probably because they didn't expect anything more at that point. They expected, okay, an implementation or onboarding call.

And that's probably what they got. And then after that, they just didn't expect anything. So in order to prevent that, I would say in your kickoff call or any sort of meeting you're having off the bat with your customers right after they close and sign the contract, make sure it's really, really clear that not only are we going to do everything in onboarding, every subsequent month or every subsequent quarter, whatever makes sense for you and your team.

Anika Zubair (10:13.046)
you are gonna hear from me. We are gonna have meetings and you are gonna have value calls or value metrics sent to you in email, whatever it is, just make it really clear the cadence of what you expect to work with your customer on. And another thing that I see is even if you are actually setting your customer up to success, like say you are very clear with them on how often you are gonna meet or what the expectations are moving forward,

What I see happen too often is CS professionals end up not adapting communication style based on what their customers need. What ends up happening is we end up communicating in the style that's very comfortable for us. So for most of us, it's probably gonna be an email or again, booking the next call. But I've had this happen way too many times before is I've worked with customers where I've naturally just emailed them.

And then one time this customer actually shared their screen with me and I saw that they had over 5,000 unread emails in their inbox, which was crazy because as someone who's an inbox zero girly, it was crazy to literally see 5,000 unread emails. But then it made me realize that this person actually prefers another mode of communication that isn't email. They preferred Slack actually. So I set up a private Slack channel and again,

they were instantly responding back to me. A little too instant if you ask me, but suddenly the lines of communication had opened up in a whole new way just because emails, even though they were comfortable and easy for me, were getting buried in my customer's inbox. And I've also had this where I've had customers who just prefer a text, by the way. Not a call, not a voicemail, not an email, just a quick text. And also on their pad, I've had customers who are like,

Can you just call me? Like, can you call me with a 10 second update? And I've also had customers who've only responded on LinkedIn. Like, here's the thing, if you're not matching your customer's communication style and preference, it's not like they're purposely ghosting you. It's just that they might've muted you because they don't end up checking their inbox as often as you would, for example. So again, just make sure not only are you setting the cadence appropriately with your customer,

Anika Zubair (12:31.412)
understand what communication means to them, what works for them, and meet them halfway. Let me interrupt this ghost story with something that's even scarier, okay? You're still doing your CS tasks manually, writing every renewal email from scratch, wasting hours prepping QBR slides, missing upsell queues, all because you're deep in admin mode. But imagine a world

where you've trained AI to think like a revenue-minded CSM. You're prepping QBRs in minutes, spotting churn risks before it escalates and creating success plans that actually get used. And you're reclaiming your time to focus on what really matters, driving customer impact. That's exactly what my latest guide helps you do.

Train AI to be your revenue-generating customer success copilot in the ultimate 30-page playbook to scale, simplify, and supercharge your CS workflows using ChatGBT or any other AI tool. Inside, you'll learn how to build an AI system tailored to your customers, write prompts for renewals, expansion, and risk calls, and refine AI outputs to match your strategic tone.

And you can use all of this to drive more revenue and not just save time. So if you're tired of wasting hours and want a smarter way of working, download the guide now at the customer success pro.com forward slash resources. will link it down in the show notes below. All right, back to our regularly scheduled haunted episode.

All right, let me tell you about a customer who ghosted me completely, by the way. This is a great story and I know we're in Halloween season, but truly this was spooky. Okay. So I was in a project with a customer. were three months into this project post onboarding. Everything was going really, really well. And then poof, no replies, no meetings, nothing, nothing, nothing, not even a bounce back. I literally, it was crickets, nothing at all. Okay. I tried email. I tried Slack.

Anika Zubair (14:48.118)
I tried LinkedIn, I tried everything to contact this customer and nothing worked. But instead of panicking, which I know probably some of you guys listening who are thinking about customers that are ghosting you, you are probably panicking. I used a few of my simple steps that I just shared with you already. And first I decided to look at what was going on within their business. I decided to Google, I decided to like just really dig into what was happening at my customer's company.

And it turns out that they had gone through a very rough reorg. Like 30 % of the entire global team had been laid off. And also there was new leadership in place and there was just new priorities and the business was in flux. And honestly, listening to this, you're probably thinking that's pretty normal in SaaS these days. But a lot of times we don't even realize what our customers are going through when it comes to reorgs, downsizing.

shifting priorities and sometimes it just takes us a few minutes to sit back and really look at what's happening with our customers because ghosting probably has again nothing to do with you but probably a lot more to do with your customers and what's happening within their business. So anyways back to the story I decided to loop in the AE that actually sold the deal and I asked if he had any contacts on the new team so like

anyone that he worked with that I maybe didn't actually have the same level of connection with. Anyways, he was able to find someone within his contacts at the company and it was the new VP. And I reached out with a short note of, I know there's been some internal change. I wanted to basically touch base and share how we helped your team hit X last quarter, like hit a metric and

If that's still the focus for you, I'd love to align on next steps on how to make it better. Okay. And then three days later, I did end up getting a reply. Not only did we book a call and talk through what happened, they actually renewed early and bought into and bought our product into a new department because this new VP was managing multiple departments. All through the fact that I decided to take a different route and really un

Anika Zubair (17:11.83)
like find out how to connect to other people within the organization. And like I said, sometimes customers aren't actually dead, like ghosts aren't dead. They're just busy or confused or overwhelmed. So don't give up too soon. Okay. Like if I could leave you with something in this podcast, I hope it's understanding that we are all busy people and your customers are probably even busier than you realize. And

just not to give up. Now, don't be annoying, but figure out different ways to actually engage with your customer and don't feel like you have to do it alone. The thing is, most of us think that we have to go and chase someone down on LinkedIn or we have to make the connection. I didn't do that. I decided to go to my AE, the person that actually sold the deal and said, listen, I have no more contacts. I don't know what else to do. Let's work together. Let's brainstorm and figure this out together.

And because it was a team effort, we were able to actually get the customer to show up and figure out what to do next. And that's what I want you to do as well. So in this week's challenge, it's super simple. I want you to take one customer that's gone super quiet and then try the comeback strategy. Okay. Look into what's happening at their company. And nowadays with AI, I'm sure you could ask Chachubt to give you a download of what's happening at their company.

And then once you know what's actually happening, I want you to send a value-based re-engagement email. Make it about them, make it about their company, and make it about the value your product drives for their company. And if you can't seem to get a hold of that same person that you're used to working with, try a new contact, or try Slack, or try LinkedIn, or try just a different channel or mode of communication. And honestly,

We hear message to be about them. If there's one thing I can say, if you have a customer that's ghosting you, make it about them. You will be so surprised when you change the narrative to them, how much more likely they are to reply. Because as humans and as human in human nature, we tend to care about ourselves more than anything else. So if you make it about your product or your service, your customer is likely not going to engage as much because

Anika Zubair (19:33.304)
they're not that interested because it's not about them. So again, change the narrative to what it's like for them. And even if only one customer comes back, by the way, of like 10 customers that are ghosting you, it's still a huge win. OK. And once you do this, OK, I would love it. I would absolutely love it if you post your success using the hashtag CS Pro Challenge. OK, use the hashtag hashtag

CS Pro Challenge, leave a comment below this podcast or on LinkedIn and tag me because I would love to see your challenge come to life. So go ahead. If you've gone ahead and brought a ghosted customer back to life using the strategies that I've covered in this podcast, I would love for you to share using the hashtag CS Pro Challenge. That would mean the world to me. But listen, ghosting happens.

But I just want to remind you, it is not the end of the world, okay? With the right strategy, with empathy and timing, you can revive the relationship and build something even stronger. It is not impossible. Now, if you found today's episode helpful, make sure you follow the podcast and leave a review. And please send this podcast to a teammate who might be dealing with their own ghost right now.

And don't forget to download the Train AI Guide. It's going to save you so much time and unlock a smarter way of working in Customer Success. You will find the link in the show notes or head over to the customer success pro dot com forward slash resources to grab it until next time. Keep delivering value. Keep building those relationships and don't get spooked. Happy Halloween and I'll talk to you soon and catch you next week.

for our next episode. Thanks for tuning in to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show. And creating new episodes takes a lot of work, so leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating.

Anika Zubair (21:59.254)
And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips. And if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if this episode helped you share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader. Remember sharing is caring.

Cheers to your CS journey and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.