Digital social media: Enabling performance quality of Indian Railway services

Abstract

Indian Railways (IR) is the single largest organization that manages and operates a mammoth of transportation services in the World's largest democracy. IR services are operated through 7,137 stations, a route length of 66,030 km, and a total track of 117,996 km. The number of passengers carried every day is 23 million with passenger earnings of INR 42190 crores. Scale of operations translates to humungous everyday challenges. Quite understandably, customer dissatisfaction is prevalent, in spite of subsidized travel fares and multiple initiatives. In recent times, IR has become very active in the digital social media space to provide real‐time and dynamic service improvements. In this talk, we will be discussing the beginning of technology intervention in IR, managerial challenges in exploiting technology advancements, and the current status in managing a large‐scale public transport operations. We will also discuss about the insights, deployability in comparative segments, and the way forward.