IRCTC Indian Railways Aims to Enhance Customer Services

Indian Railways has set up a subsidiary called Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) that deals with the catering, tourism and online ticketing of the railways in order to upgrade the services with private and public sectors. The mission of IRCTC Indian Railways is to improve the facilities and services for customers in railway hospitality, catering, travel and tourism. IRCTC is providing services to around 13 million passengers daily.

Indian Railways has taken the responsibility from IRCTC to handle the catering services. Most of the services are operated by the respective zonal railways, whereas IRCTC is providing catering services to few trains like all Frakkha express, Duranto express, Maitree express, Kandhari express and some Rajdhani express. In addition, IRCTC Indian Railways commenced a non-railway catering (NRC) project, through which cafeteria were set up in several Indian Institutes and Ministries.

IRCTC is an official website launched mainly to authorise online ticket booking in India. It has changed the way of ticket booking in India. Anyone can access this website through internet, mobile phone via SMS or GPRS connection. IRCTC has also created a hotel and flight booking options. Tickets can be modified or cancelled through this website without going to the respective station. IRCTC is also providing I-tickets, which are similar to regular online tickets.

Recently, the website has provided a PNR option to check the status of the booked ticket. The status can also be verified by opening the website and entering the train between stations. A loyalty campaign, called “Shubh Yatra”, has been newly introduced by IRCTC for regular travellers. Most of the passengers are benefitted through this program and can get discounts for all their booked tickets, just by paying an upfront yearly fee.

In order to ease the ticketing process, IRCTC has come to a decision to introduce Rolling Deposit Scheme (RDS), by which passengers can reserve their ticket against advance money. This fastest e-commerce website provides many payment options such as credit cards, atm cards, cash cards, debit cards, NEFT, netbanking etc.

Foreign and domestic tourists can avail for deluxe and budget package tours from IRCTC. Indian Railways also offers luxury tourism packages. Tatkal ticketing scheme has been introduced in all the classes except unreserved compartments, in most of the available train between stations in India. The ticket booking starts at 10:00 hrs daily, one day before the train departure from the source station. Recently, IRCTC has commenced a call centre in order to service customers and guiding them.