Railways on SMS:Railways gets closer to Customers!

" 14 million passengers

2.4 million employees

63,327 km of route length

18000 trains a day

Revenue of 18 Billion USD (approx) "

- Indian railways success is no underachievement.

Railways ministry is the plum portfolio every political party wants to grab in its kitty after the elections .In recent years , Indian railways have brought about significant process changes aimed at improving customer satisfaction and improving brand equity.
One of the recent initiative is 'Railways on SMS'.

Under this scheme - customers can track train status,ticket status,fares and accommodation availability.Its a good step that would be of great value add to customers given the fact that mobile telephones has reached out to nook and corner of India.To roll out an initiative covering such a huge customer base and rail network is no mean task.

There are definitely quite a few best practices which we could pick up from our own railways !

British Council Library : Innovation in Customer Service

One of my favourite places in Chennai is the British Council Library (BCL).BCL has always maintained high quality with respect collection of

Books,ambience,interiors ,visual display and customer service. Being a regular visitor and member for nearly 7 years , I have been closely following the improvements and innovation they bring about in their processes.

Recently , one innovation that impressed me was the RFID enabled Self Check out counters.

In this system, Library members can place the books and membership card ,check out the books ,collect the automated receipt and walk out. No hassles of queue or waiting time.

To add to this , they have introduced round the clock 'Book drop facilities' to enable book returns. IT Systems are also well interlinked check out system to take care of late return fee charges.

In a nut shell, BCL is a not jsut another library but a great organization to learn lot of innovative practices in customer service.

If you are in Chennai,try to visit BCL .

http://library.britishcouncil.org.in/

India Election 2009 : Analysing the Analysis!

Indian elections are over and results are out.Yesterday all the top TV channels of India had a field day.

As political parties settle down to analyze the gains and loses ,here's quick thoughts on the election results show by TV channels.

Clearly NDTV and CNN-IBN did a great job.

What really impressed me was the TOUCH SCREENs used by both the channels to analyze state by state position.

According to me , NDTVs graphics and touch screen analysis scored a shade higher than CNN-IBN.While NDTV had its complete team of Prannoy Roy,Burkha,Vishnu with elite panel CNN-IBN pulled it off with its ever star performers Rajdeep and Karan Thapar.

Definitely the data presentation took care of several aspects like : key information communication,visually pleasing graphics,data stratification,good legends,no data overload.

Its not just celebration time for Congress,this time pollsters too have reasons to celebrate as their predictions of UPA victory came true.

Resonance Newsletter : Issue 04

View Resonance Newsletter Edition -04