Air Selangor commits to deliver best customer experience through sustainable waters supply.

Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya is the highest population states in Malaysia. That’s why people have a huge demand for water supply and water quality.

Air Selangor is responsible for supplying water to 2,262,706 household accounts, 321,016 non-residential accounts, and 5,271 special accounts (religious and charitable institutions) takes up the responsibility on supplying clean and safe treated water to all consumers.

The water supply system of Air Selangor starts with the acquisition of raw water, which is then filtered into clean treated water and delivered to users safely. Therefore, in addition to repairing and replacing pipes or handling user inquiries and complaints, Air Selangor also manages 8 dams, 3 off-river storage facilities, hybrid off-river augmentation system, 34 water treatment plants, 738 pump stations, 1,618 reservoirs, and 30,422 kilometers of pipe.

However, in order to continuously improve the quality of water, Air Selangor is also responsible for operating 15 river monitoring stations, 1163 water quality sampling stations, 3 laboratories, 190 hybrid distribution real-time water quality analyzers (HYDRA) and automatic chlorine addition system (OACIS).

Increase building new water treatment plant to meet future needs

To cope with the growing population and industrial and commercial activities in the future, Air Selangor also needs to plan to increase water supply. Therefore, Air Selangor invest in the construction of new water treatment stations, including the ongoing Rasau River Phase 1 Water Supply Project, which is expected to be completed in 2025 and will be able to supply 700 million liters of water per day while the second phase of the Rasau River project is expected to be completed in 2030 and will be able to supply 700 million liters of water per day after it is put into operation.

At the same time, Air Selangor is also launching the second phase of the Langat River water treatment plan project, which is expected to be completed in 2028, and will be able to supply 1.13 billion liters of water per day.

In addition, the second phase of the Labohan Dagang water treatment plant project, which can also supply 200 million liters of water per day, is expected to be completed in 2029.

In 2030, if all new water treatment plants are put into service, the water supply will increase from the current 6.035 billion liters per day to 8.765 billion liters per day. The water storage capacity of Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya will increase from the current 11.9% to 17.7% by 2030. Of course, the aging of water supply facilities is also a major challenge. However, in order to provide users with the best water supply service, Air Selangor will carry out scheduled maintenance work time to time to ensure that the water supply facilities can operate as usual.

Strict monitoring to maintain water quality

The goal of Air Selangor is to provide seamless and uninterrupted water supply to users. To this end, Air Selangor has also set up team PAKAR, and with the assistance of the local government and LUAS to protect the raw water source from the river from pollution that caused by third-party.

PAKAR is responsible for assessing the water quality of rivers and carrying out monitoring work at 230 sampling points in 6 catchment areas. River monitoring stations are also set up in designated rivers to monitor water quality, and early warnings can be issued if there are cases of pollution accidents.

PAKAR also conducts a research program on watershed management in Air Selangor; the main function of watershed management is to practice and monitor the readiness of policies, technologies, systems and personnel. The research plan aims to assess and review the extent to which Air Selangor is currently implementing catchment management, as well as to provide an overall response plan and strategy. Catchment management involves the establishment of baseline information on river, odour detection techniques, data management and utilization, integrated water quality systems, and related functional organization structures.

In 2022, Air Selangor has conducted more than 3 million water source inspections. Every water treatment plant will be conducting a test every two hours. A total of about 190,000 tests are carried out in the regional laboratory, including physical, chemical and microbiological analysis tests.

High-standard laboratory testing water quality

Air Selangor operates three regional laboratories that are accredited with ISO 17025:2017 certification. These laboratories are at Sungai Selangor, Sungai Labu and Sungai Semeyih. These laboratories which are well equiped with advanced analytical instrumentations allows Air Selangor to test for additional microbiological and chemical parameters which are beyond the current parameters required under MOH’s standards.

As of December 2022, the 3 water treatment plants have conducted a total of 291,525 water quality tests on the water. Air Selangor also operates 1,163 water quality sampling stations distributed in 692 water supply districts. Among them, 692 are supervised by the Ministry of Health, 401 are supervised by Air Selangor and 70 are jointly supervised by the Ministry of Health and Air Selangor.

As the largest water services provider, Air Selangor dedicated to provide safe and clean treated water. Through the plan “Trust Our Tap 2028”, water that Air Selangor provides has reached the benchmark of DWQS (99.85%) and QAP (100%).

Air Selangor is also investing in digitization and implementing monitoring technologies, such as the Hybrid Distributed Water Real-time Analyzer (HYDRA), which is an online water quality monitoring station that will send out an alert if it detects abnormalities in water quality.

In 2022, Air Selangor started 5 projects, including the construction of a new water quality sampling station, water quality assessment in the reservoir, reservoir cleaning work, pipe cleaning, and the start of the pipeline cleaning area (POLIGON) equipped with compression and isolation devices; by 2022 In December, POLIGON covered 110,400 kilometers of water pipes.

The cleaning of the reservoir is usually carried out every 6 years, covering deep cleaning of the surface and internal results, removal of sediment and disinfection. And these cleaning tasks are to ensure the quality of clean water supplied to each user.

In addition, Air Selangor operates a total of 738 pump stations and 1,618 reservoirs as of December 2022. Moreover, since 2016, Air Selangor has been committed to restoring the abandoned pump stations and reservoirs. So far, 54 pump stations and 144 reservoirs have been repaired and resumed operation, including 11 pump stations and 53 reservoirs in 2022.

Moreover, in order to reduce the impact of water disruption, Air Selangor also implements sustainable water management. The purpose is to maintain and improve the efficiency of water production and distribution, and to reduce the impact on water disruption, reduce water loss, reduce environmental impact and improve water quality.

Customer Experience

In order to provide users with the best experience, Air Selangor not only strives to reduce the impact of water disruption, but also strives to ensure effective and timely communication with users in order to establish a stronger connection with users. To this end, Air Selangor also uses a number of different channels, including customer service counters, social media, apps, official websites and media to get in touch with users so that users can get the information they need.

Statistics show that the Air Selangor app has been downloaded more than 3.9 million times. In 2022, there are 52,342 interactions through the AIRRA chat box in the app, and 18,808 interactions with the help center. At the same time, it also received 1,209,333 calls and 363,103 door-to-door inquiries.

After the introduction of robotic process automation (RPA) technology in 2021, the service level of the call center has reached 90% in December of the same year, and increased to 93% in 2022.

To enable customers to get the services they need in a timely manner, Air Selangor has upgraded its mobile application. Now users can obtain the real-time status of water disruption notice through i-ERP, and there are many support services, including one-stop centers, public water supply locations, and even query water supply with or without schedule. Other added features include the ability to make physical appointments, delete accounts, and allow both registered and non-registered users to track the progress of complaints made through the Help Center and AIRRA.

Users can ask questions, request to be contacted, check the status of questions through the Air Selangor official website or app, and even complain about water bills and meters, and even other water service issues.

In response to water meter failure and leakage issues, Air Selangor has also added a “leak report” button in the help center, so that complaints can be resolved within 24 hours. As for water pipe leakage and water production, through the Closed-Loop Customer Management Dashboard, related complaints can be managed more effectively through the big data of the dashboard. In addition, Air Selangor conducted a customer satisfaction index survey on 4,770 users from various regions and different customer groups. The results show that users’ Net Promoter Score (NPS) for Air Selangor in 2022 is +14 points, and the user satisfaction rate (CSAT) reaches 84%.

The above are the efforts made by Air Selangor to maintain the quality of water supply and improve user experience. As Malaysia’s largest water services provider, Air Selangor continues delivering the best experience to our consumers.

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Published on Oriental Daily dated 23 July 2023: Oriental Daily