Call 139 to board Nightmare Express

Call 139 to board Nightmare Express
Deccan HErald

Rather it’s the agonising experience that railway commuters in Bangalore have been going through over the last fortnight for seeking information from the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) of the South Western Railways.

Dial 139 for unending ordeal. This is no title of another Hitchcock-esque movie. Rather it’s the agonising experience that railway commuters in Bangalore have been going through over the last fortnight for seeking information from the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) of the South Western Railways.

On dialling 139, a caller, by sheer need or bewildered by the maze of automated instructions that follow, chooses the seemingly safest of the options: he asks for the operator, only to be told that “Your call waiting number is 29!” And, now the endless wait begins.

Not that telephone-savvy callers’ experience would be any different. Whatever information they seek and however successfully they manoeuvre their way through the maze of the instructions, chances are that they would be asked to be on hold till the server ferrets out the information sought from the vast sea that railway database is.

“I have never managed to get through to the operator. You have a long call waiting period and in case you get the call across, you should have enormous patience to go through the menu,” laments Lakshmi, a passenger. Clogged system

The IVRS was launched amid great fanfare by the South Western Railways last year, to provide easy access to information on the status of train ticket, arrival and departure timings and accommodation availability and save passengers the ordeal of standing in serpentine queues. But today, the system regularly gets clogged during peak hours much to the chagrin of passengers and railway officials.

“It is a temporary technical snag. We have a network of 240 dedicated phone lines. But the problem could be because of inter-exchange problems of the Department of Telecom. But sometime ago, we did have a virus attack,” says Mahesh Kumar, Divisional Railways Manager, Bangalore.

This is seconded by software developers. “We suspect a possible virus attack. The software was developed for a closed network. But most of the information is today outsourced from neighbouring networks, which might not be protected. One also cannot override the importance of adequate staffing and infrastructure,” claim officials.

IVRS caters to 30,000 calls a day. But the network is manned by only 16 operators who work in two shifts.

“The operators attend to 2,000 calls a day. The system gets choked during peak hours, when most trains arrive or depart. The call density is thickest from 5:30 am to 8:00 am, 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm and 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm,” lament the officials, adding that increasing the number of operators might just help.

Santosh K, a frequent traveller to Chennai says, “Last week, I kept trying the helpline as I wanted to know if my waitlisted ticket had been confirmed. Till the last minute, I was kept guessing. Thankfully, my ticket was confirmed when I reached the station.”

“Most people are unaware of the ‘quick query’ option (direct dialling). You can skip browsing the menu. A survey shows that 80 per cent of passenger queries are related to PNR status and accommodation availability. We have now made these two features accessible on quick query,” adds Kumar.

The SMS option

IVRS — a pilot project introduced in Bangalore and Patna in 2005 — was again updated two months ago. A SMS Alert (1390) was made available to BSNL mobiles. “The SMA facility will send alerts to BSNL mobile phones as and when your ticket is confirmed. However, the response is just picking up. We receive about 100 SMS-es daily,” say Railtel officials.

IVRS was expected to reduce congestion at the stations too. “The Bangalore City station receives about two lakh visitors everyday. With IVRS, we thought we could cut down on physical enquiry at the counter, which was at least 4,000 everyday,” says senior Divisional Commercial Manager S Gagarin.

In a lighter vein, the officials say, it is the “funny Indian psyche” at work. “People cross check every fact. Most customers access info on the menu and again call up the operator to verify. This duplication deprives a genuine caller of speedy service. Moreover, we have about 10 per cent of customers making dialling errors,” adds Gagarin.