Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday, December 25 said that the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) e-ticketing website will be upgraded with new features to make train ticket booking easier for passengers. According to an official statement, Indian Railways authorities are working towards enhancing user personalisation in the IRCTC next-generation e-ticketing website along with bringing advanced features. The new features will provide better reliability to use the e-ticketing website. Simple design and easy-to-access facilities are likely to transform the online passenger reservation system of the e-ticketing arm of Indian Railways - the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation.
According to the Railway Minister, the IRCTC ticketing website remains the first contact point of railway passengers. “Under the new digital India, more and more people are now moving towards booking the tickets online rather than going to the reservation counters and therefore IRCTC website needs to really double its efforts to constantly upgrade itself,'' said Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.
Some of the newly-added interesting features on the IRCTC e-ticketing website for passengers are as follows:
- DISHA chatbot: In order to address queries of passengers round the clock, an artificial intelligence (AI) based chatbot called ‘Ask Disha' was introduced on IRCTC's website and IRCTC mobile app. With this facility, any query regarding train journey such as, ticket cancellation, catering, ticket booking, etc. can be answered.
- Book now pay later: IRCTC introduced a new post paid payment option under 'book now pay later' category. This allows passengers to pay at a later stage for train tickets booked on the IRCTC website. The facility of ‘ePaylater', as well as ‘pay-on-delivery', is available for both reserved and tatkal tickets. The allows passengers to book tickets and make e-payments within a period of 15 days or on the delivery of ticket within 24 hours.