Satisfaction and Service Quality in Indian Railways - A Study on Passenger Perspective

Customer satisfaction and retention is one of the key determinants to measure the quality of products or services and hence the Indian Railway performance. Due to the growing importance of quality in our life, customers desire to enjoy a relatively better quality of products or availing superior quality services has been increased. India is the Second highly populated country of the world and its rapid population growth also contributes to an increase of people’s travelling demands. In Indian Passenger trains is the cheapest and comfortable mode of travelling especially for long distances. This paper aims to investigate the passengers’ perceptions about the service quality of rail transport system in Indian Railways while travelling between the major cities especially from Kerala to Delhi, Mumbai and Delhi. A modified SERVQUAL instrument including eight service quality constructs: Reliability, assurance, tangibles, timeliness, responsiveness, information system, empathy, food and safety and security were employed to measure the passengers” perceptions about the service quality of railways. Out of 500 respondents, only 442 were selected and these respondents were frequent railway traveller on these routes. Results indicate that passengers perceive that quality of services delivered to them is not satisfactory.