Bringing Quality Goods and Services to the Community

In late 2008, the Atlanta Civic Site began to part­ner with res­i­dents, the Cen­ter for the Study of Social Pol­i­cy (CSSP) and Consumer’s Union to explore how to use CSSP’s cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion frame­work could sup­port NPU‑V res­i­dents in improv­ing their access to qual­i­ty goods and ser­vices through local busi­ness­es and institutions.

The frame­work enables res­i­dents to tar­get spe­cif­ic con­sumer issues impact­ing their com­mu­ni­ties, assess the val­ue of exist­ing goods and ser­vices to the con­sumer and devel­op strate­gies to address con­cerns raised through their inquiries. It is cen­tral to civic site efforts to nur­ture com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and civic engage­ment, rais­ing the voic­es of res­i­dents as informed, edu­cat­ed and engaged con­sumers with the right to share their lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion with the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices in their neigh­bor­hoods and demand.

In 2009, res­i­dents from NPU’s V, X and Y began to draw on the Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion Frame­work to orga­nize a grass­roots cam­paign and iden­ti­fied their first three tar­get areas for inves­ti­ga­tion: ear­ly learn­ing and K‑12 edu­ca­tion; nutri­tion­al ser­vices and gro­cery stores; and the avail­abil­i­ty of high-qual­i­ty goods, ser­vices and prod­ucts in the community.

The frame­work has three com­po­nents: the Con­sumer Advo­ca­cy Group, Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion Net­work and Will­ing Ser­vice Provider Network.

The Con­sumer Advo­ca­cy Group is a group of res­i­dents who func­tion as the ​“pol­i­cy­mak­ers” for the effort, set­ting pro­to­cols and build­ing the agen­da for explor­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty. In imple­ment­ing the Cus­tomer Ser­vice Frame­work in their com­mu­ni­ty, these res­i­dents have met with the Geor­gia Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture’s con­sumer affairs divi­sion to gath­er infor­ma­tion on qual­i­ty stan­dards for gro­cery and food stores and the role of con­sumers in advo­cat­ing for that lev­el of qual­i­ty. They have also worked close­ly with the More­house School of Med­i­cine’s com­mu­ni­ty health depart­ment to con­duct a data sur­vey on goods and ser­vices in the area and to iden­ti­fy the built, social and ser­vice envi­ron­ments required for a healthy, com­plete neighborhood.

The Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion Net­work is a broad­er group of res­i­dents who inves­ti­gate the avail­abil­i­ty and qual­i­ty of tar­get­ed goods and ser­vices in the com­mu­ni­ty. Through ​“secret shop­ping,” research and oth­er activ­i­ties to test the qual­i­ty stan­dards of goods and ser­vices, these res­i­dents iden­ti­fy the impact, inequities and dis­par­i­ties in the pro­vi­sion of goods and ser­vices in their neighborhoods.

The Will­ing Ser­vice Provider Net­work — of which the civic site is a mem­ber — is a group of busi­ness­es, insti­tu­tions and ser­vice providers that agree to be mon­i­tored as a way of receiv­ing reg­u­lar ongo­ing feed­back from res­i­dents and oth­er customers.

The part­ners hope that this new res­i­dent strat­e­gy will pro­vide a mech­a­nism for the com­mu­ni­ty to hold the civic and oth­er ser­vice providers — pub­lic and pri­vate — account­able for the effec­tive­ness and qual­i­ty of the ser­vices and sup­port pro­grams avail­able in the neighborhood.