Week 2, Experience 1 by Kevin: “One day and one night in a train!” (June 14 – June 15, 2009)
Background
At the end of my summer internship, I was relishing the opportunity to go back to XL. As Fr. James had once put it, it was my ‘home away from home’. However, to get to Jamshedpur, I would have to endure a 27-hour rail journey on the Gitanjali Express - leaving Mumbai at 6 am on 14th June and reaching Jamshedpur at 9 am the next day. An odyssey to truly test the mettle of the bravest woman or man! Let alone me!
Prior Expectations
The Indian Railways has indeed improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. However certain routes (the Mumbai – Jamshedpur – Kolkata route, being one such route) command less attention and hence still have large room for improvement. For example, there is little choice of food on the Gitanjali and the delay in arrival can, at the worst of times, be 6 – 8 hours. I was keeping my fingers crossed as I had a couple of late afternoon lectures to attend on the 15th …
Actual Experience
Since I had booked my ticket on my own, I expected to be the only XLer on the journey. But I was pleasantly surprised to meet not one, not two or even three, but 4 of my batch-mates! My premonition of the journey being a long and arduous one changed in seconds. On boarding the train, we chatted for nearly an hour and then decided to rest. I was awakened at 9 am by the pantry chief on his rounds, distributing breakfast and taking orders for lunch. I was pleased since often in the past, I had slept through these rounds of the pantry personnel - only to stay hungry until a major station popped up. I thanked the gentleman for awakening me, promptly ordered and had breakfast, placed the order for lunch, and then resumed my early morning siesta. While breakfast was warm and sumptuous, the cold chicken gravy at lunch and the chicken itself left a lot to be desired. The ambience (though not due to the train itself) made up for it – thanks to the cheerful company of friends. I slept soundly through the night – and the train reached on time. All in all, many times better than I had expected!
Service Trinity Model
| Core Service |
| · Safe and on-time arrival at destination · Reasonable food and amenities |
| Funding Mechanism |
| · Customer pays · Company discounts prices (passenger train travel subsidized by Indian Railways by increasing the cost of freight train travel) |
| Customer Management System |
| · Polite and friendly attitude to customers (pantry chief + wagon conductor) · Appropriately apologetic for train delays (from past experience) |
| Employee Management System |
| · Have incentive systems for the best workers · Customer feedback on the experience could be used to identify high performers |
SERVQUAL ratings
| Dimension | Rating (out of 5) | Remarks |
| Tangibles | 4 | The upper berth which I had was clean; overall train neat |
| Reliability | 4 | I expected the train would not reach very late, since the Gitanjali has really improved of late, on this parameter |
| Responsiveness | 5 | The pantry chief and wagon conductor were very responsive |
| Assurance | 4 | I was happy to be awakened and informed when the orders were taken, this time |
| Empathy | 5 | Good amount of it from the two employees I interacted with |
N.B.: (1 = very poor, 5 = very good)
Critical Analysis and Suggestions
I found the pantry chief to be intelligent, firstly in awakening me and secondly in the way he explained the menu to me. True, there was less choice – but he still seemed fully aware of exactly what everything was. Also, the wagon conductor was efficient to ensure that blankets and bedding were provided to us even before we entered the train. The journey itself had no unscheduled stoppages and the train was on time.
My only suggestion would be for the pantry car to probably offer a slightly wider variety of simpler dishes so that customers have more choice and there is little scope to get the preparation of a dish wrong.
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