New Delhi, January 05, 2021.

Powered by Microsoft Azure, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s (IRCTC) AI-powered chatbot AskDISHA has helped improve satisfaction of customer interactions by 70%. Developed by conversational AI platform CoRover, the virtual assistant uses technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to answer passenger queries. Following the success of AskDISHA, IRCTC is partnering with CoRover to co-sell and re-sell AI products and services to government and private organizations across industries.

Earlier checking train running schedules or status of tickets through phone, email or interactive voice response (IVR) was a lengthy process. The nature of queries was highly repetitive, yet passengers had to experience significantly long waiting periods for even minor queries. In search of instant responses, users sought information from unverified sources. Interactions with the virtual assistant have provided customers with instant responses and frequent queries now have zero wait time.

Since its inception in October 2018, the AskDISHA chatbot has handled over 10 billion interactions benefiting more than 178 million passengers. Supporting both voice and text capabilities in English and Hindi, it is available on both web and mobile app interfaces. The chatbot can answer user queries on ticket reservation, refund status, PNR search, cancellations, probability of ticket confirmation, as well as other travel and tourism offerings of the Indian Railways subsidiary.

AskDISHA processes about 1,50,000 passenger queries daily and customer queries across other channels like social media, phone calls and emails have been reduced by 70%. Passengers receive immediate responses with 90% accuracy and user feedback on the chatbot service has been 85% positive. AskDISHA has also received the Asia Leadership Award for Innovation Using Technology 2019 for being the first chatbot for any government organization in India.

Ankush Sabharwal, Founder, CoRover, said, “Across sectors, cognitive technology can help organizations generate revenue, save cost, improve customer experience and operational efficiency. With secure and scalable architecture on Microsoft Azure, conversational AI platforms like AskDISHA can offer multi-format, omni-channel as well as multilingual support using different technologies like AI, ML, NLP, AR, VR, or RPA. Easy to integrate as well as create and train, CoRover’s chatbots also offer real-time analytics for quick decision-making.”

CoRover has helped in the seamless automation of customer engagement services for organizations across banking and financial services, healthcare, retail, travel and tourism, energy, transportation, and media and entertainment sectors. Their chatbot-as-a-service offering is compatible with over 13 Indian languages and more than 100 international languages and is available in multi-channel support for websites, mobile applications, SMS, and social media among other platforms. With over 275 million unique active users, 4 million daily active users and 800,000 concurrent users, CoRover’s platform meets stringent security norms and processes.

Sangeeta Bavi, Director – Startup Ecosystem, Microsoft India, said, “Microsoft Azure helps CoRover deliver highly scalable solutions like AskDISHA that allows organizations like IRCTC engage effectively with their customers. We are excited to partner with CoRover as their chatbot-as-a-service platform is adopted across industries.”

Microsoft is committed towards empowering startups in India and helping them become enterprise-ready with its deep technical expertise and go-to-market resources, including support from its global enterprise sales and partner ecosystems.