Ensuring Customer Satisfaction on Long Distance Train Journeys: An Indian Railways Case Study

Imagine embarking on a long journey, only to realize that a smartphone charger or the smart LED display in front of your seat is not functional. Ensuring customer satisfaction is important in building a loyal customer base and making the customer feel satisfied about the quality of their journey. This paper probes a significant lacuna within the Indian Railways that pushes the onus on the passenger to report a problem and then follow it up until resolution. Myriad ways of reporting problems confuse travelers. This paper advocates collection of passenger comfort data thru a smart phone application. An initial categorization of the problem is explained followed by building an intelligent system that solves problems quickly. Smarter resolution, with active participation of on-board staff and ways to incentivize the passenger reporting the problem are suggested. Unique customer satisfaction metrics and factors affecting them with examples to apply in the railways are explored. Equipment failure data gathered via the app, could be integrated with asset management databases for predicted maintenance. Finally, a staged implementation plan is proposed that uses Machine Learning (ML) models for life cycle assessment of parts.