Impact of Service Quality Management (SQM) Practices on Indian Railways - A Study of South Central Railways

The main objective of this study is to present a framework developed for assisting Railways to monitor and control the quality of services provided to passengers. The study evaluated the passenger Rail Service quality of Indian Railways by developing SQM (Service Quality Management) model on the basis of SERVQUAL and Rail Transport quality. Three new dimensions (Service Product, Social Responsibility and service delivery) are added to the original five SERVQUAL dimensions (i.e. assurance, empathy, reliability, responsiveness and tangibles). The instrument is tested for reliability and validity. Empirical study was conducted at Secunderabad Railway station of South Central Railway, India, using a purposive sample of 200 respondents. Valid responses from the questionnaire are statistically analyzed by using factor analysis. This research has also identified the order of importance for these eight factors, for example service delivery and social responsibility are identified as the most important and the least important factors respectively. This study would help the Railways to monitor, control and improve the service.