In order to resolve queries of railway passengers over the internet pertaining to various services offered, the Indian Railways has launched the services of AI-based ASKDISHA chatbot in Hindi language on Friday. Chatbot, a special computer programme designed to simulate conversation with users, especially over the internet.

The railways had initially introduced the services for the benefit of the users of the ticketing website www.irctc.co.in and tourism website www.irctctourism.com of its Public Sector Unit, Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC).

The ASKDISHA Chatbot was initially launched in English language but in order to further 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 also in the e-ticketing site www.irctc.co.in. The customers can now ask queries to ASKDISHA in Hindi language by voice as well as text,” it said in a statement.

On an average, around three thousand enquiries are being handled by ASKDISHA in Hindi language on daily basis and the figure is increasing day by day which also shows the acceptability of the new feature by the customer. IRCTC plans to launch ASKDISHA in more languages along with many other additional features in the near future.

The first-of-its-kind initiative by IRCTC is aimed at facilitating accessibility by answering users’ queries pertaining to various services offered to railway passengers. Since its initial launch, more than 150 million passengers have been benefited by ASKDISHA with 10 billion interactions for seeking help on reservation of tickets, cancellation, enquiry of refund status, fare, PNR search, train running status, enquiry about retiring rooms and tourism products.