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How the IRCTC used knowledge management to its benefit

Tapping its knowledge base of popular destinations and peak and lean seasons of railway routes has expanded the scope of rail travel.

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Introduction
In recent years, globally competitive companies have discovered the importance of an organisation-wide knowledge management system (KMS).

KMS provides employees with instant access to knowledge gained throughout the organisation, thereby enhancing business effectiveness. From being a hygiene factor, KMS has now evolved into a “must-have” component for customer-facing units or departments. For organisations that are spread across the globe, this is a necessity.

Customers contact the firm at various touch points, i.e. physical office or branch, the telephone and internet access 24x7. They expect instant resolution for a bulk of their queries, if not all of them. Successful companies utilise the opportunity of constant contact to build loyalty. And how? By giving frontline staff rapid access to adequate customer and product information, thus speeding up problem resolution.

As an example, in the mid-1990s, Citibank India changed the rules of competition with its campaign “The Citi never sleeps”. It was the first bank to introduce phone banking to the Indian customer where he could call and transact anytime — day or night.

By announcing that it worked 24x7 for its customers, in striking contrast to its competitors who operated strict business hours, it raised the bar so high that it enjoyed unassailable competitive advantage and high brand recall for a very long time. This was made possible by ensuring information availability to employees at all times.

Industry best practice

An autonomous body under the railway ministry, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) offers online train ticket bookings with a home delivery facility. Its website displays information on trains plying different cities, distances, important stations along the routes, ticket availability, tariffs and so on. For the captive traveller who books tickets on the website, the IRCTC is set to launch tourism packages that will offer one-stop service for travellers. It plans to tie up with local tour operators, hotels, government resorts and ground transport providers to offer a start-to-end package.

It also plans to start a national call centre to provide a one-stop enquiry system for train timings, reservation status, arrivals and departures and even for booking tickets. KM helped the IRCTC tap its knowledge base of highly frequented destinations, popular travel circuits, and peak and lean seasons of various railway routes to expand the scope and scale of rail travel.

No, Christmas has not been advanced, and this is not Santa’s big surprise. All this and more is promised, only and only if the firm gets its IT act together, its employees motivated and the top management involved.

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