Indian Railways through its Public Sector Unit, Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) had earlier introduced the services of Artificial Intelligence base ASKDISHA chatbot in October, 2018 for the benefit of the users for its ticketing website www.irctc.co.in and tourism website www.irctctourism.com. The ASKDISHA Chatbot was initially available in just English language, but its developers are constantly enhancing its performance and usability.

The chatbot is a special computer programme designed specifically to facilitate interaction with users over the internet. IRCTC’s first-of-its-kind initiative aims to enhance accessibility by responding to user queries regarding various services provided to passengers on the railway. Since its initial launch, AskDISHA has benefited more than 150 million passengers with 10 billion interactions to help them with ticket reservation, cancellation, refund status enquiry, fare, PNR search, train running status, enquiry about retirement rooms and tourism products and much more.

In order to enhance the customer services rendered and to further strengthen the services of the chatbot, IRCTC has now powered voice-enabled AskDISHA to converse with customers in Hindi language which is available in the e-ticketing site www.irctc.co.in along with the IRCTC app.

Customers can now initiate conversations with AskDISHA through voice and text in the Hindi language. On average, AskDISHA handles about three thousand enquiries in Hindi on a daily basis and the figure is growing day by day which also reflects the customer’s acceptance of the new feature. IRCTC plans to launch AskDISHA in more languages in the near future, along with many more apps.