As promised, here’s the post on IRCTC – India’s largest ecommerce site. I tell you how it does not work, and how we can make it work! Last Thursday, I decided to go to Ahmedabad for some work. Went on to IRCTC to book a train ticket. I logged in, and entered the date of the travel and selected other options to find out what are the available options. What came up after two minutes’ wait was a blank page. I backed up and tried it again. And it asked me to login again. Did that, filled up the travel plan, and tried again. Blank page again!
Tried with another browser, same blank page. After struggling for an hour, I could finally see the list of available train. New screen, new challenges. Now the availability check option kept giving me blank pages. Or “Not Available” status. If there was no reservation possible in that train, why show me that option in the first place?
My commitment to book the ticket was higher than the tantrums the IRCTC site kept throwing on me. After about three hours of efforts, I could find a train and reservation option combination that was available. Went on for the online payment. Entered the credit card details. I was happy that finally my ticket will be booked. Hit the submit button, the system told me that it’s processing the payment. The next page came up, and said “Communication failure“, the payment was not processed. It said I could go to my “Failed payments” page, and see the transaction.
Too much to expect! I did not see the transaction in failed payment page either. What that means, is I have to now start the whole thing over again, pray god that things go smooth, and be a privileged customer to get a ticket!
This, after charging a fee for online reservations, and being the number one Indian ecommerce website. Sucks!
I know IRCTC has changed the way we book railway tickets. No more waiting in long queues to book tickets, no more paying high charges to the agents and all that. Frankly, IRCTC did deliver on the promises in the initial years. But lately, it’s been just too slow, just too difficult to use, and it simply doesn’t work!
It doesn’t work again and again. Over the last one year, I have booked more than 50 tickets using the system, and have had problems on more than 40 of them. That’s an 80% failure ratio.
Today, if you wanted to get a ticket through IRCTC, you better be prepared to spend 3 hours on it, or do it at 7AM (which is when I succeeded in getting that 20% success).
Frustrated with this experience, we sat down to find a solution. We developed a small rich internet application that will make the entire rail reservation process easier. We expect it will bring up satisfaction levels by 75% or more.
We wrote up a note about this and sent it to IRCTC officials. Contrary to my expectations, they did like the proposal. They agreed that some of the points mentioned, have been on their list too, but they have limitations. Primarily because the backend provider – CRIS – has certain limitations.
I am not willing to buy in these limitations. IRCTC really has a strong value proposition, and it’s a shame if we put brakes on the usage by clunky technology. I say it’s the right time to upgrade IRCTC/CRIS technology. People have been tired of the system for more than a year, and we deserve a better IRCTC!
Checkout the note and the prototype below. Post your comments and ideas here, and we will have IRCTC take notice.
You can download the full report here, and can see the “new and improved” suggested booking process here.
Hi,
I am really appriciate Nirav’s effort, for making such a great RIA application option for IRCTC. its really worth if get this kind of easy solution for booking the ticket, cause i also faced so many problems to book my ticket
Also advice to Nirav do confirm your application will handles such huge indian railway data?
if yes then its cool
santosh
I was batteling with the same problem for two days when I thought of booking the tickets through the “Quick Book” option and Viola! it took 10 minutes to book two way tickets through the IRCTC site. Perhaps I was just lucky – I was got my tickets booked at the peak time (4 PM)
Santosh: This is a prototype. We are not suggesting to do a complete revamp of their technology platform, but at least the frontend. There are a few API calls that may need to be tweaked, and which is where IRCTC is struggling (if I understand that correctly from the interactions I had).
In terms of the load, our approach would not really pose a lot of extra load. It cuts down load in numerous areas (being a RIA, less data to transfer etc), but it also adds up in few (checking availability, instant feedback etc). I think if adding these features requires IRCTC to put up a dozen more servers, they should do it!
Also, the prototype is developed by Magnet’s RIA & Design teams, especially Ami Shah. So I want to give due credit there. My job was to give them direction!
Swati: Yes, the quick book features is much better – but it still assumes you know everything about the ticket booking. If you see, what we are suggesting is very similar to quick booking, but in a cleaner and easier manner. (IRCTC actually launched quick book while we were building this note, and I actually started thinking about this a year ago!)
Great job, Nirav! Sounds like you are learning the lessons of the SmallCo Design Master Class!
I would advise to design past the first experience of a customer, since the following visits to the site are apt to be ones that are similar to the first. The first visit should be easy, but the second visit should be smooth as glass! I’d love to help with a role spec!
Albert
It is nice to see the effort from u Nirav, and i think IRCTC site needs this kind of attention.
if u will ask me, i would suggest to go through the concept of ‘Inverted Pyramid’ Approach for information processing in this case. The solution suggested by you is in that direction. I will also like to point out that sometimes, it is not possible to implement Inv. Pyramid fully(u can but it will end up being as bad). It is the interaction designer’s skill to balance with normal flow approach(current IRCTC approach) and Inv. Pyramid one.
I would be happy to talk more on this if you want. you can look at some of the text from Prof. Joshi on this and also can search for similar views by people like Ben Bederson or Ben Sneiderman on interaction with information.
Keep it up.
best luck. i hope to see the new IRCTC site powered by magnet soon 🙂
PRANAV M!STRY
http://www.pranavmistry.com
Nirav,
I tried the same before, they are still government and they will be remain like that only. But its glad that you atleast received some reply 🙂
Albert: Yes, we did learn a lot from the design master class! Would love to continue doing that!
Pranav: Thanks for your feedback. Will catch up with you over email for more.
Ashvin: Hey, that’s interesting. What did you do? Would like to hear your experience!
The current site looks and feels like yahoo. Nirav has tried to redo it the google way. I have 2 suggestions. 1) Use AJAX, avoid Flash 2) Take care of small things like “Upgradation”, “Payment Options”, “Window seat” etc. It counts.
IRCTC developers team, if you are listening, my advice is – stretch usability (a little bit), let the software be smarter and user friendly.
Read more…
http://shantanuo.livejournal.com/54041.html
Dear Nirav,
Hats’ off to you for putting into words what so many of us have been patiently but frustratingly experiencing for so long. I do a lot of bookings on the site as I travel around quite a bit. Best time by far is between 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. Mostly by 9:30 or so the site will not open at all.
The connections between the irctc site and the indianrail servers need to be streamlined, enhanced and speeded up. Many a time “Communication Failure” message in irctc stem from inability to get required data from these servers.
Cancellations on irctc are another big pain in the ****. Try at least 10 to 15 times and be patient. That’s what I’ve learnt.
The feature of travel lists and master passenger lists are great. I save a lot of time by using these. However my experience showed a bit of a flip side to it too.
Two days ago I attempted to book two Chair Car tickets on Nizamuddin Garib Rath from Bandra to Baroda. The train has no concessions for Senior Citizens. However my travel list inclueded one Senior Citizen. Result:The payment was debited from my account but ticket could not be booked. This was quite different from a failed payment error. A code was provided along with a regret screen. I tried again entering details manually and NOT ticking on Senior Citizen concession required. The site popped up a dialogue insisting that I avail of senior citizen concession and would not proceed to payment screen till I had complied. Same result. Finally I went to the local booking office, waited for an hour and booked tickets manually. To their credit however the refund was credited to my account after only one working day. Hope my experiences can help you streamline your model for a new irctc.
Regards
Deone
Hi Nirav,
The system was much better till last year. IRCTC is seems to be driving in the reverse gear. They are not improving but deteriorating.
On March 1, when the advance booking period was extended to 90 days, I tried to book tickets. But the system was not responding. After trying form 8 AM till 10 AM, I called them up. They said there is some problem due to the heavy load and they are attending to it, the system will be up in 15 mnts. Nothig happened the whole day and the next day too. The railways must do anything to improve such useful service. Till the system is improved they must forget that they are agovernment department, or entrust the service to a private party.
all of u are i think computer geeks but as far as person like me who can simply book tickets on irctc is concern really now a days this site is not working at all All the time it show ‘comunication failure” and now i think it is much easy time saving to get tickets from their counters. i think indian railways is going backwards ( back to agent era). all u computer people pls make them aware about that
I agree that the system was much better earlier. As I write this, I need to book tickets for tomorrow. I have been trying from 7AM in the morning, it’s 12.44 now, and the IRCTC site simply does not open up! It times out before it begins!
Looks like with all the offline agents that they are setting up, they are making it more difficult for a normal user to book tickets online.
The March 1, 90 day booking, was another incident that made us post this report in public. The site just could not handle the load.
What are the other complaints you have? What are the suggestions?
i really liked the effort put by you.
I am trying to book tickets from last 3 days but IRCTC hangs in between, does not load.
i sent a suggestion to irctc some time back but they did not reply
Seriously booking tickets via IRCTC is really a pain in da neck! I really don’t remember if I have ever booked the tickets here at one go. 2-3 retries is a norm if its your lucky day else.. I don’t understand why can’t they make the interface as simple as the ones that we use to book airline tickets. Nirav, the prototype that you have shown is really cool and good to work with.
I haven’t had many bad experiences with IRCTC. But, from last Friday till Sunday morning it was quite pathetic.
I also felt that the problems were at the IRCTC’s side and not at the backend, as the Indianrail site was working fine. I think they share the same databases.
Really irctc.co.in sucks,
These guys has to improve.
I had posted on IRCTC site some months back
http://neerajexpress.wordpress.com/2006/09/01/railway-tickets-made-easy/
Prototype looks good.
I had lot of grouses and had few ideas how I wanted the site to be. I am not having them on the top of my head, will come back and post them later.
1) The interface should be html/ajax. Not flash. (I do not know the advantages of using flash though)
2) User should be able to save one to few configurations like – I frequently travel up and down b/n two cities and almost always take same train and have same preferences (like side lower berth). I use the same card for payment too. The only thing that changes is the date. I hate to fill up the details in every session in multiple page loads. Bank card should also be associated to the saved profile. (anyways bank is going to authenticate)
Storing would help one-click booking
3)Showing availability status along with showing the available trains (as has been done in the prototype) is very helpful.
4) Not related to site design though, users of i-ticket should be given 25rs concession rather than are being charged extra money. Using solar heater allows us some exception in electric bill. Similarly by using i-ticket, we are not burdening the booking counter employee, we are using our own paper to print, no postage reqd. (Not to mention the tantrums we face by connecting to the slow site and worst is when the bank communication fails) So why should we be made to pay “more” if not the same or at least as I said, to encourage us, we should be allowed some concession.
5)PNR status should be made available on irctc. Now we have to go to southernrailways.com to check the pnr status
6)Strictly no pop-ups. Also sometimes I had faced some problems of irctc in firefox, it looks like one of those IE friendly sites 😉
RK:
Thanks for your detailed comments.
We used Flash, because it was much easier for us to build it using Flex! At the same time, Flash as a platform makes doing a lot of things much easier. What we built was just a prototype, but if we want to do some more advanced features, Flash would be a good choice. Of course, we can use AJAX.
Yes, we thought about saving the frequently used travel data. That’s a good feature to have.
Agree with other points 😉
Hi Nirav,
First of all great to see your efforts to change the IRCTC. To be frank, it’s not just the IRCTC to be changed but all the major Indian ecommerce sites like Air India, Indian airlines, private airlines, Govt. Banks, all needs to be upgraded. I live abroad and I faced hell a lot of problems to book a ticket or make a bank transaction, the Indian websites are LOW below web standards. I am working as an ecommerce Manager in Germany and I always want to contribute to the betterment of ecommerce in India. Please let me know if I can of any help.
Nirav,
I am an ignorant person about flash. After playing around a bit more, it looks quite good 🙂
One more point I remembered, if after making all the choices, if the communication with bank fails, all data is gone, we have to re-enter the data (in the present irctc) which is a pain considering the communication between bank fails many times. Saving the data before bank transaction would be a good idea.
I will keep coming back with the points that are painful to me.
If required I can chip in with some testing of the software 😉
I really appreciate the effort to change IRCTC site 🙂
One of my friend always book the ticket from irctc site and always abuses the site and government after visiting.He keeps on mentioning that site is slow and even after filling all the details his money from the bank gets deducted without giving any ticket confirmation. So now he never books ticket online.
I am able to book my tickets on line but for the last four days I cannot access booked tickets history or cancel booked tickets as the server says “connection to http://www.irctc.co.in:80 has been terminated temporarily,and some data has been transferred” every time it asks me to re-enter password but I cane get any further!Could anyone please help?
Hi,
I have experienced problems too. It is a good
service but when it works.
All I can say is, they should use latest technology
and faster servers and servers that can support
huge number of users.
Hello!
On 2-Apr, I booked 2 First Class tickets in 2672 – Nilagiri Express, from Metupalaiyam (MTP) to Chennai Central (MAS) for my journey on 7th April 2007.
I paid my money through ICICI Direct Debit and my money Rs. 1493 for two tickets got debited. But when the website was getting transferred from ICICI payment gateway back to IRCTC, I got a “page cannot be displayed” error message.
So, now, I’ve paid money for the tickets but the tickets have not been issued to me. I’ve emailed to care@irctc.co.in and etickets@irctc.co.in, but haven’t received any response. The customer care numbers I tried are always busy.
Please let me know how to proceed on this, and in the first place, is this forum the right place to discuss this?
Also, ensure that such mishaps dont occur in future. Thanks!
Nirav,
I need help and need it badly.
I just echo Saravana’s comments above.
I made payment for the ticket from HDFC direct debit, the payment has gone out but then had a blank page on the IRCTC website. I only have a transaction ID and don’t even have a PNR number. The journey is for Chennai to Bangalore via train 2657, sleeper class booked under tatkal scheme. Please help.
Hey
Well done, a very proper analysis and a good prototype.
Although I havent faced those many issues with the website. I do believe that its more to do with the scale and connectivity of the website than just the interface.
I remember a CRIS guy coming and giving us a presentation telling that the railways system of Delhi itself is bigger than that of the UK. Scale and ensuring good connectivity with a good response might be a big challege for CRIS here.
Trully amazing
I was going thrugh irctc and it was taking too long to load
So i thought there must be some wiged that may help, so i searched for it, though i found none, i reached here. And i am trully amazed that some one has gone so far to resolve this problem.
Another thing i want to mention here is the number of ads on ircts, ever a B grade website does not have this many ads on its homepage or any other page for that matter. I think its high time Lalu prasad do some thing about it 😉
Hi!
On 14th March I booked one Tkt from Banaglore to Bhubaneswar in Prasanti Exp.while booking the tkt it showed me network failure and then when i checked i saw RS 1199/- ruppees has been debited from my citi bank credit card account.
So,I didnt get the tkt but the money got debited from my account. I have alraedy emailed to care@irctc.co.in and etickets@irctc.co.in so many times but haven’t received any response. The customer care numbers I tried are always busy.
Please let me know how to proceed on this if anyone knows regarding this matter.
I have booked tickets more than 100 times. Few times after paying through card, I have received the error message “Error due to communication failure”. Some times the next day or day after next, they have refunded my money.
Lots of performance improvement have to be done in the server side. But we can book tickets easily if we think and book. Before 8am and after 8pm, no railway booking centers will be opened. During that time the load on the irctc server will be very less and that is off peak hours for the banks also. So the chances for receiving communication errors are very less.
One more thing. Try to take e-ticket, if you have the option. Because it will be easier if you want to cancel the ticket, unlike when you take i-ticket (you have to go to reservation center to cancel the ticket).
I feel there is a bug in irctc.co.in website. while tying to re print the ticket the code checks for the journey date to be printed with the system current date. since its checking with the system’s current date, if the system’s date is running wrongly and also the user doesnt have the admin rights to change the system time then he might get a false alert that the pnr has been passed already. To avoid this flaw the code should be rewritten in such a way that the journey date must be compared to the server time ie the time should be obtained from the server for comparision.
this will overcome the false alert being displayed.
its jus a suggestion to make irctc work better.
Thank you,
i was booking a ticket and after the money transaction it showed communication error and my balance got cut.. it said the money will be refund.. its been 4 days and i din’t recieve any notification… i tried calling the customer care center after trying for some 30 min i got my call connected and it was ringing but no one to answer… and there is no such option to check for the status of the refund… plzz do reply… but its really bad…
thnq
HI NIRAV , I,AM NOT A GEEK BUT I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR EFFORTS TO IMPROVE THE ONLINE TICKET BOOKING EXPERIENCE . REALLY IT IS NOT WORTH SPENDING HOURS IN FRONT OF COMPUTER TO GET YOUR TICKET BOOKED LAST TIME I BOOKED TICKETS IN APRIL .WHEN GO TO THE HISTORY TO PRINT MY ERS RESPONSE CAME I HAVE PASSED THE JOURNEY DATE.THEN CALLED THEM PAYING STD CHARGES AT THEIR DELHI NUMBER .I GOT THRU AFTER TOILING FOR TWO HOUR .AND REQUESTED THEM TO MAIL ME ERS .AS IT WAS NOT ENOUGH THEY HAVE CHARGED MY CARD TWICE . YES THEY CREDITED MY CARD LATER .AGAIN I HAVE BOOKED TWO TICKETS ON 19/05/07 .BUT I,AM NOT SURE BECAUSE I AM YET TO GET EMAIL FROM IRCTC AND COULD NOT ACCESS BOOKED TICKETS HISTORY.
never book i-tickets through the site as we need to go to the reservation counter again.
to cancel the i-tickets
how to get the eticket pnr number ????
Hi Divya,
When you get the eticket via courier, you will have the PNR on it. You can see your booked tickets from the Booked Tickets section.
:Nirav
Nirave ,
Nice Job, when others just talk on the issues. You tried one step forward to solve it. I appreciate your attitude.
–
Saravana
Dear Sir,
I had more bad experience with irctc web site.
I have booked tickets and after the last stage make payment, the page disappears. Again and again, I tried and after 4 or 5 times I get my tickets booked. But my bank account has been debited thrice and refunded after 4 or 5 days.
Also I got wait listed ticket waiting number 49. But I could not get my position when given my Pnr number, it says that before one hour of the confirmed ticket notice put up only we can know our position.
When I want to know through my mobile, it replies that PNR status only known only after displaying the Chart by the Station Master.
They have to attach additional coach, if they issue ticket with waiting list of 149 etc. But they are not doing so many times. We have to cancel our ticket and incur addition loss of cancellation charges Rs 40 or Rs50.
They should stop issuing of wait list ticket for I ticket like E-tickets. Or they should attach an additional coach and ful fill all wait list ticket holders. Or atleast they should make the position clear before 1 day ie., 24 hrs before the departure of train to enable them to make other mode of conveyance.
Recently, I have to book a Van to chennai and incurred a loss of Rs 7,500/- by engaging the van.
IRCTC should definitely improve their service.
On another occasion, I have not received my e ticket from the Courier, as May 1st being holiday, Then I am out of station for 15 days. So I get my ticket copy from the Booked History page. But the concerned staff refuse to accept my ticket cancellation with out Original ticket. He also refused to accept , If I get a duplicate ticket by paying the fee of Rs20/- for issuance of duplicate ticket. They can not pay the amount across the counter. They can only credit the amount to the Bank account only. Even then they have refused.
IRCTC should arrange to cancel I -ticket also through net like e-ticket. Also e-ticket should be made possible to cancelled across the counter in addition to net. Because more people have no their own computer. Also some people have no printer. They have to take print from Browsing centre. They have to pay Rs 5/- or Rs 3/- for print out copy in addition to Browsing charge of Rs 10/- or Rs 20/- as the case may be, as irctc site is not easily got when browsing. I have experience of more than 3 hrs browsing, I could not book a single ticket.
This is for kind information of all, and I request IRCTC to improve the service by simplified method. They are very busy and they have no time to look after customer difficulties.
Hope near future, they will improve the service.
Thanking you,
Kanagasabapathi
I want to book ticket through via ticket
for example i want to book ticket from surat to chennai via mumbai using the single ticket.
Can to please explay me how i can do this.
Hi Nirav,
I too have the same harrowing experience before.Kudos to your effort.At least some one has taken initiative.Worse is their customer care phone no.It rings…a gentleman picks the receiver yawning..replies Dekhlenge(We will look into).We never get a reply back.
Sudhansu S.Das
#573,DDA Flats
Pocket-2,Sector-14
Dwarka
New Delhi-110015
Mobile.9312671662
Hello Sudhansu S.Das
I just find on the internet that your are from Dwarka.I am also from Dwarka, Sector-7,
I just like to inform you that we have a online group of Dwarka Residents for the development of Dwarka. You may visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/Dwarka-residents?hl=en
and you will find the activities on the web which is self-explanatory.
i request you to join this group for the development of Dwarka Subcity.
Anil Nayal
anilnayal@gmail.com
Nirav,
Yor ticket booking steps amd process is a lot better. A good job done.
Our Service sector, particularly that which resides in the public sector, uses outdated technology. They take great pride in showing off that they are using a “computer”. Never mind how outdated the software or hardware. And, worst of all, they exhibit a mule-headed resistance to improve.
Keep up the crusade and tell me what I can do by way of support. I stay in Faridabad – Delhi for all practical purposes!
Best wishes.
Satish Saxena
Hi Nirav,
I must say the initiative taken by yours company is commendable. There are multiple areas that may be improved with the whole handling of Indian Railways.
IRCTC has been involved into the separate activity of tourism & catering development through the latest technology.
However execution of IRCTC demands brains work badly.
Simple logics –
1. Its a govt site, charging people with booking fee with every reservation. Then why do we see so much of cluttering of Ads ?
2. IRCTC takes inputs from CRIS which essentially works on the tech front. How could they be so impoverished with ideas that they have absolutely no brainer website in place with so many complications involved in finding out the code of a station.
3. Web design lessons could be organised for CRIS guys.
4. IRCTC website is not multiple browser friendly. It does’t work properly with Firefox
5. Too many Pop ups are for one spoil-sport, and for two people with pop up blockers are not left with any options.
Lets see when the elephent would wake up.
Nirav, thats a great attempt at improving the “govt” UI … I’ll contact you for some apps I have in mind :o) travel related mostly …
thanks so much for the hard work, the time you have invested in the process and more than anything for convertingthe frustration and the horribles fiasco of a website into something so much more user friendly and actually cute!!!
i liked the colors and the way each column opens and he way the list of trains drop down.
keep up h good work
want to use the real thing very soon
pls follow up n make it happen for all of us
regards
Use http://erail.in
and then Quick Book on IRCTC,
should be fast to book tickets
Vimal
Can any one plz give me the customer care number of IRCTC………….