Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 6(3), pp. 164 - 170
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2018.060306
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Integrated Public Grievance Redressal System (iPGRS) A Next-Gen Solution for a Next-Gen Railway

Kandukuri Raju ^1,*, Shivam Gupta ^2
1 Rail Domain Consultant, Travel, Transportation and Hospitality (TTH), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Pune, India
² Rail Domain Business Analyst, Travel, Transportation and Hospitality (TTH), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), New Delhi, India

ABSTRACT

Railways receive millions of service related complaints and grievances from the passengers annually through various channels (web-based, mobile app, social media, phone or paper based etc.). However, these channels are usually disparate, siloed, and heavy with manual processes. For many rail companies, there is no uniform business process or single platform visibility to address these grievances. The result is a high level complexity (multiple channels, differing processes and so on) that increases response times in addressing them. Railway companies in the Asian continent started to semi-automate their complaints processes but the process is not sufficiently robust to survive the large volumes expected in the future. Today, most railways employ a small 'grievance department' with people working in shifts 24x7 and manually handling thousands of complaints daily. Moreover, the penetration of smartphones is leading to a drastic increase in the volume of complaints, resulting in railways having to consider hiring more people. The result of this is two-fold – i) added cost pressures due to increase in staffing and ii) reduction in revenues due to loss of passenger satisfaction. iPGRS is an omni-channel solution that helps railways overcome these challenges. iPGRS integrates grievances from multiple channels onto a single platform, and creates a Service Request (SR)-based workflow that enables monitoring of grievances resolutions. Concerned stakeholders in the grievance department receive these Service Requests as an action item in their workflow and it becomes their responsibility to properly address and close each request. Feedback related to a grievance resolution is integral to ensuring transparency and accountability in a system that handles large volumes of grievances. The iPGRS system also includes many automation techniques, like rule-based engine, text analytics and more, to speed up the whole process. iPGRS offers a 360-degree integrated dashboard for further analysis and service improvements. We developed a prototype and demonstrated this solution to a large passenger rail organization in Asia for their consideration.

KEYWORDS
Grievance, Automation, Workflow, Analytics, Dashboard

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Kandukuri Raju , Shivam Gupta , "Integrated Public Grievance Redressal System (iPGRS) A Next-Gen Solution for a Next-Gen Railway," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 164 - 170, 2018. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2018.060306.

(b). APA Format:
Kandukuri Raju , Shivam Gupta (2018). Integrated Public Grievance Redressal System (iPGRS) A Next-Gen Solution for a Next-Gen Railway. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 6(3), 164 - 170. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2018.060306.