Digital social media: Enabling performance quality of Indian Railway services

• Published date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1849
• Author: Sundaravalli Narayanaswami
• Date: 01 November 2018

PRACTITIONER PAPER

Digital social media: Enabling performance quality of Indian

Railway services

Sundaravalli Narayanaswami

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad,

India

Correspondence

Sundaravalli Narayanaswami, Public Systems

Group, Indian Institute of Management,

Ahmedabad, India.

Email: sundaravallin@iima.ac.in

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 passen-

ger earnings of INR 42190 crores. Scale of operations translates to humungous every-

day 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 interven-

tion in IR, managerial challenges in exploiting technology advancements, and the

current status in managing a large‐scale public transport operations. We will also dis-

cuss about the insights, deployability in comparative segments, and the way forward.

1|INTRODUCTION

An interesting recent development in the Digital story of the Indian

Railways (IR) is the push towards utilization of social media for

connecting with customers. The Railway Ministry's active social media

cell has garnered appreciation from passengers and observers around

the nation. This cell has also been recognized as creating a stronger

connection between the Railways and passengers in what has often

been a highly fractious relationship.

2|SOCIAL MEDIA IN PUBLIC SERVICES

Mr. Suresh Prabhu, the then Honorable Minister of Railways, received

a distress phone call soon taking charge of the Ministry of Railways in

2014. A passenger was calling, saying a railway official was harassing

her, and requesting assistance. Although action was swiftly taken

based on the complaint, the minister was keen to develop a robust

mechanism for grievance redressal in railways. This led to the

establishment of the Railway Assistance Helplines and the Railway

Messaging Application, both in early 2015. However, the utility and

impact was less than what was desired.

IR needed a user‐friendly and widely accepted grievance reporting

and redressal mechanism that was easier to track and provide feedback.

The Ministry of Railways (MoR), Government of India, created theTwit-

ter handle @RailMinIndia and the Facebook page “Ministry of Railways‐

India”on December 2, 2016. This was announced by the Minister of

State for Railways Shri Rajen Gohain as a written reply to a question

in Rajya Sabha on December 2, 2016. The ministry also created handles

for all General Managers and Divisional Railway Managers of Indian

Railways. The objective was to interact and engage with public using

social media (Sharma, 2017).

3|THE SOCIAL MEDIA CELL

During the first 4 months of its existence, the social media “team”was

run by a single person, Mr. Ved Prakash (Rathi, 2017). An ex‐operations

man who had been with the Railways in Dhanbad for 5 years, Mr.

Prakash himself admitted to being a rookie when it came to social media.

By January 2016, however, a proper social media team was established

to address customer grievances. The 15‐member team, located on the

fifth floor of Rail Bhawan, was set up under the aegis of the Public

Grievance cell, and two of its members are now being allocated to the

task of handling complaints about the Indian Railway Catering and

Tourism Corporation. The team was given training on the utilization of

social media, customer service, approaching distressed passengers,

and complaint resolution. The team now works 24 × 7 in three shifts.

Received: 24 June 2018 Accepted: 26 June 2018

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1849

J Public Affairs. 2018;18:e1849.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1849

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of10