AI and Chatbot in customer engagement in IRCTC

With the rapid evolution of technology, chatbots have become an integral part of engaging with customers. In a fast-paced country like India, train is one of the most preferred modes of transportation, particularly long distances. For people to travel long distances, people use IRCTC is the website or application to book their tickets. IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and tourism Corporation) is a public sector undertaking that provides services for the Indian railways, including ticketing, catering, and tourism. To enhance their services, it introduced Ask Disha, (Digital Interaction to Seek Help Anytime) an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Virtual Assistant (Chatbot, Voice Bot) that helps users perform various transactions like end-to-end train ticket booking including payment, canceling train tickets, change boarding station, check refund status, check PNR status, answering customer queries and more. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a set of technologies that assigned to perform various tasks such as the ability to look and analyse data, make recommendations and more. Chatbot is a computer program that imitates human conversation through text messages and voice interactions. This paper examines the AI driven chatbot infused in IRCTC for booking tickets, looking into how effectively it examines customer grievances, answering customer queries and improving customer satisfaction. This paper focuses on finding how effectively and efficiently Ask Disha is being user-friendly, how well it addresses customer queries, and solving the challenges faced by the customers, whether they prefer human interaction over chatbots. By analysing the response accuracy and customer feedback, this study also evaluates the efficiency of AI-driven interaction in IRCTC. Furthermore, the paper will bring forth the challenges, aligned with Chatbot implementation such as usage efficiency, rectifying language barriers and technical difficulties. Random sampling is used as methodology to collect data from varied users of Ask Disha, to investigate about their satisfaction about the chatbot. Descriptive Analysis is used to analyse the satisfaction level and user friendliness of the chatbots.