The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Cooperation's website irctc.co.in is a big help for lakhs of Indian Railways commuters who book tickets online. However, people often face issues while booking tickets online. They have several queries related to ticket cancellation to refund status. Though the IRCTC has its call centre to address people's queries, but it takes time to address the issues over a phone call. This has resulted in a longer waiting periods due to a flood of calls there.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

To address people's problems instantly and reduce the number of call backlog, IRCTC has launched a digital interaction chat bot Ask Disha to help people clear their doubts. The artificial intelligence powered chatbot has been fed with around 400 frequently asked questions (FAQ) and their answers. Once you click on the icon and starts typing your query, the list of related questions appears in the drop-down. It then shows the answers as soon as you select a question from the drop-down list.

A senior IRCTC official said that the department will be feeding more queries and their answers in the chatbot and it will be a continuous process.

For the past few years, the IRCTC has also been addressing people's query through its Twitter handle @IRCTCofficial.

The IRCTC has also increased the website's capacity in the last four years.

"Over the last four years, the capacity of the website has increased to 20,000 tickets per minute starting from 2000 tickets per minute in 2014, a ten-fold increase," the IRCTC has said.

Watch This Zee Business Video

Apart from the capacity, the entire user experience has been improved substantially with the launch of a new interface with easier navigation and standard views that enable the passengers to transact smoothly.