ETHICS : Your cell phones, friend or foe?

It’s a device as challenging as communication, apparently. Today, peoples’ personal connection towards their wireless devices, cell phones being one of the subset of these devices is pervasive.

They spend thousands of minutes using these devices to the point of feeling so emotionally attached to them. Some say they feel anxiety without their mobile phones. A friend of mine tells me that he “can’t live without” one. Anyway do not call me an anti-cell phone. No, I am not.

In fact I am of the opinion that, with more technological capabilities, such as personal organizers and navigation devices we who possess these devices should see them as an essential part of our everyday lives.

Yes, indeed, they are. My major concern though rests on the unethical implications that the use of these devices bring to our community. I wish to highlight that of negative impact on the quality of customer care.

At some point in time all of us have experienced situations where a public service giver speaking to you and at the same time speaking to his or her device. Here is a person with a divided mind serving you. In actual fact, attention is not paid, you feel ignored, and as a customer who is aiming to get maximum satisfaction from the services, the said satisfaction becomes a nightmare.

This service provider may not be aware of the need to build customer relationship or has decided to ignore this reality and hence turning his or her focus to the device. It can be very frustrating.

My simple remedy to the situation has usually been to say to them, ‘sorry when you are done with your wireless device, please let me know then I will submit my request for service’. Sadly my option does not normally yield much.

I am thinking broad though. Think of the serious implications caused by the use of cell phones especially for workplace environments as well as other public areas. We hear now and then the negative impact on the user’s cognition particularly when the user is, say driving or crossing streets on foot. We were able to live peacefully without any interference when we had no cell phones, and yet today our cell phones are always on or on most of the time to the point where one may feel he or she has to answer it even when it interrupts an important activity.

No wonder why our neighbours have taken this matter seriously. In Rwanda for example, healthcare providers have now been prohibited from using mobile phones during working hours. They say this is done to “ensure better service delivery.” I agree. They have made a very good and clear decision worth giving a try. It is unacceptable to see patients left unattended to while medics make noise on phones, so they say.

Oh yes, pedestrians talking on cell phones are also paying the price! I have personal experience as a bystander who has, in so many occasions overheard a lot of cell phone conversations. I’m always annoyed by others’ cell phone used in public. Some people get more annoyed even when, as they would normally suggest, do not worry for my phone “volume” is controlled.

So, at a lower level of the negative impact of cell phones is the fact that cell phone conversations can be more distracting than even a typical dialogue because in most cases the content of a cell phone conversation is less predictable.

This is true whether it is due to overhearing from either side of the conversation even though experience shows that one-sided conversations are more noticeable and intrusive be it on an easy task or a harder task.

As you use your cell phone remember that customers are important stakeholders in your organization. It is critical that you comply will Bill Gates advice when he says; your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. If you have made people unhappy due to your unhealthy use of your wireless devise, please reform and give people more than what they expect to get, for as Albert Einstein puts it; only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.

Dr Alfred Sebahene is a lecturer at St. John’s University of Tanzania