Evaluating the policy of listening to customer claims in a drinking water utility using fuzzy-AHP approach and WASPAS method

The objective of this work is to develop a decision support methodology intended for drinking water utility managers in order to support them in the challenge of achieving better performance in the management of the customer area. This methodology requires the prior collection of data for the identification of registered claims. Subsequently, an evaluation of the performance of the customer area defined by the objective ‘Better listening to customer claims’ will be carried out; this requires the structuring of the objective in a hierarchy based on indicators and the adoption of two adequate decision support tools, a fuzzy-AHP for weighting the elements and WASPAS for calculating the performance of the objective. An application is carried out on the water utility of the Wilaya of Bejaia (Algeria). The data collection enabled the identification of 19 types of claims divided into three aspects. The combination of fuzzy-AHP and WASPAS allowed assessment of the performance of the objective during the period 2014–2018 and to make a judgment on the national policy established. The results are satisfactory. Progress has been made in claims management, but the major difficulty lies in the claims processing relating to the quantitative aspect. Highlights Evaluation of the policy of listening to customer claims in a drinking water utility.; Importance of the claims information source ensuring reliability and availability of practical data.; Overall analysis of data through the identification of the claims’ nature.; Choice of an approach that simplifies the system under a hierarchical tree structure.; Choice of tools, fuzzy-AHP and WASPAS method for better performance evaluation.