 "Suresh Prabhu")
Housed on the fifth floor of Rail Bhawan and working 24x7 to address the grievances of commuters, the railway ministry’s vibrant social media team has won accolades from across the country. From promptly arranging medical aid and food to helping travellers in distress, this 15-member team put in place by minister Suresh Prabhu is helping build a strong connect between the ministry and the people of India.
“You can learn anything if you have the right intention and passion,” says a senior railway official. And, this seems to sum up Prabhu’s innovative social media experiment.
“It all started with a phone call to Suresh Prabhu one night, a few days after he took charge of the railway ministry. The passenger said a railway official was harassing her and requested for assistance,” says Ved Prakash, director of publicity and information, Indian Railways.
Though immediate action was taken on the basis of the complaint, the minister wanted to put in place a robust system for people to freely air their grievances. Railway assistance helplines 138 and 182 and the messaging application were started in early 2015, but their effectiveness could not be gauged.
Prabhu wanted a more robust system to ensure that there was a proper way to check the redress of grievances and the time taken for it. So, in August 2015, the ministry started using microblogging site Twitter as a platform to receive grievances, address those, and also assess the response time of the officials concerned.
“The minister made all general managers and divisional railway managers open accounts on Twitter. There were initial hiccups, especially as most of them were new to the system,” says Prakash.
For the first four months, the social media team was a one-man show run by Prakash, who worked around the clock and informed the zones, departments and officials concerned whenever a complaint was posted on the social media platform.
Today, with over 1.71 million people following the railway ministry on Twitter, and 1.56 million following the minister, the ministry receives over 6,500 tweets a day.
Before coming to the national capital, Prakash had been an operations man in the Railways, Dhanbad, for five years. “I got to know about the vacancy and I applied for it. I was interviewed by Prabhu. Back then, I did not even have a Twitter account. But a man can learn anything if he wants to,” Prakash says.
It was not until January this year that a proper social media team was set up to address commuters’ complaint. This team, after receiving a training on the use of software and how to approach a passenger in distress, now works in three daily shifts of eight hours each.
The team has been set under the public grievance cell. Also, two of its members are being assigned to handle the issues related to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC).
How they go about their business
The railway ministry’s social media team works through the ‘OneDirect’ software and all of its tweets are directed to it. There is a set of keywords by which the tweets are segregated into three priorities – urgent, high and low.
As soon as a tweet comes, a ticket is generated and the tweet is categorised as one of the three priorities. It is then assigned to a person on the shift who procures the basic details of the train number, PNR, platform number and directs the grievance to the official concerned.
The response time for the first tweet is set at eight minutes and the ticket has to be closed within 15-20 minutes. “We are working on reducing the action time,” Prakash says.
In the event of a distress message, a call is also made to the passenger and relevant details are sought, says Anchal, a supervisor in the team.
It is interesting to note that even Prabhu’s tweet to the ministry is generated as a ticket.
“Nearly 6,500 tweets are received by the ministry every day. Out of these, 1,000 are actionable. Evenings are mostly the peak time,” Prakash says.
In addition to the massive flow of grievances channelled through the ministry’s Twitter handle, there also is a flood of calls, as the social media platform generally has limited audience. For this, the Indian Railway has tied up with cellular networks to know the zone in which the passenger is travelling. As soon as a call is made to the ministry, the number is traced to the zone in which the passenger is at the given time. And, the required action is then taken.
Asked about passengers’ most common grievance, Prakash says it is cleanliness and punctuality.
Challenges for the social media team
Relating one of the most challenging experiences that the social media team has faced so far, Prakash says it was finding two boys who ran from their home in Tata.
The ministry was informed that the children most probably got on to a train to Mumbai. “We first checked on the number of trains from Tata to Mumbai and then zeroed down to three. After that, we gave their pictures to the Railway Police Force who began searching operations in those trains. First, all AC coaches were checked, and then were the sleeper coaches searched. The children were later traced in a general coach near Nashik,” Prakash says.
A report of the performance is generated every day and Prabhu is actively involved in assessing it and keeping a tab on it.
“The grievance redress has not only built a strong connect between the railway and the people but also changed the working style of officials. They have now become more compassionate and vigilant. The system is improving,” Prakash concludes.
