Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday launched the revamped IRCTC website and app with new features and enhanced user experience
The upgraded e-ticketing website will enhance ticket booking and travel experience.
Launching the new and upgraded platform, Goyal said, "Steve Jobs had said, "The customer, not technology, must be the core of your strategy." Technology should be suitable for customers. Technology should be used as a means to serve customers."
Terming the upgraded website the New Year gift to the passengers, the Indian Railways said the Upgraded e-ticketing Website and App offer “Best-in-class” features.
Speaking on the occasion, Goyal said, “The Railways is committed to serving the nation, and constantly working to augment its services to further improve the rail travel experience. This Upgraded e-ticketing platform for booking of online Railway tickets, will enhance passenger convenience."
He said that IRCTC should continue to work towards constantly improve the web site and ensure that is second to none in the world as per the digital India mission and vision of PM.
The upgraded e-ticketing website aims to provide best in class user experience amongst various other online travel and ticketing websites, the Railways said in a statement.
The level of these features will be even more advanced than the ones offered currently by the other ticketing websites. In most websites, the station search entry is still alphabetical, availability status is either not there or old in time. Moreover, the convenience of integrated booking for stay & meal in this upgraded e-ticketing website is unmatched, according to the statement.
At present, this e-ticketing website of IRCTC has more than 6 Crore active users, using it to book more than 8 Lakhs tickets daily. Around 83% of the total reserved railway tickets are booked through this online system.
Complete User personalization linked to the user login. Booking of meals, retiring rooms and hotels has been integrated and can be directly booked along with the tickets, thus providing a one stop solution for the needs of the traveller.
Predictive entry suggestions using Artificial Intelligence to be given to the passenger when he is entering the station. This will greatly reduce the hassle in searching stations and also save time in ticket booking.
Simpler checking of the refund status at the user accounts page. Earlier this feature was not easily accessible.
‘Regular’ or ‘Favorite’ journeys can be booked easily by automatically entering relevant details.
Train search & selection simplified by putting the information on one page to reduce the time used by passengers and enhancing the booking experience.
All information on one page – Availability for all class are displayed along with respective fares for all trains. Simply scroll the page and choose to ‘Book’ the desired train and class. Earlier each train seat availability and fares could be seen only after clicking on that train individually.
A ‘Cache system’ has been introduced in the backend to provide availability status. This will avoid delays in loading availabilities.
In case waitlisted tickets, its ‘confirmation probability’ is displayed. Earlier this had to be checked for each waitlist status separately.
Availability for other dates can be toggled on the page itself.
Prompts during the booking process for making it easy for even less computer familiar users. This will save his time in wandering on the website for searching the website.
The journey details will be shown also at the payment page. It will prompt the user to check and rectify, if there are any typographical errors. These corrections can only be corrected by visiting a PRS centre.
The website has in-built features for enhancing cyber security by using appropriate captchas.
