Railways to open 23 call centres

The Indian Railways will open 23 call centres across the country to provide information on its services after analysing its pilot projects in Bangalore and Patna over the next three months.

These call centres will be in line with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd's 23 telecom circles across the country as they will provide the telecom lines, according to R Velu, Union minister of state for Railways.

He was in Bangalore to inaugurate the South Western Railway's Integrated Train Enquiry System (call centre), in association with Railtel, in Bangalore on Monday.

The South Western Railway has set up the call centre in Bangalore at a cost of Rs 60 lakh. It can be accessed by dialing '139' from anywhere in Karnataka. With this, passengers need not remember different numbers for different kind of enquiries.

BSNL has provided 240 lines as against the previous 37 lines for this call centre. This Interactive Voice Response (IVR)-based service is mostly automated and would be available in three languages "" English, Hindi and Kannada. The call centre will employ 12 people.

Presently, Indian Railways carries 13.5 million passengers in 1,200 trains per day. The opening of a call centre will mean that passengers can access crucial information like arrival and departure of trains, fare/concession details, rules and regulations for loss of ticket, change in name, break journey, circular journey and information pertaining to foreign tourists.

"We will roll out these call centres across the country based on the success of the two centres in Bangalore and Patna. The status of reservation against the PNR and availability of reservation for a particular train can now be known through a 'Quick Query'. We are also providing information corners in the Passenger Reservation Service offices and later at stations from where passengers will get free access to call centres on hot-lines," Velu noted.

The call centre can be accessed by dialing "139' from anywhere in Karnataka. For every call the passenger makes to this number, BSNL will pay 15 paise to the Railways. Nearly 40,000 calls a day is expected to be answered through these centres.