Title - Delhi Metro to gauge customer satisfaction

NEW DELHI: If you are unhappy with any of the services offered by Delhi Metro, here's your chance to be heard. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is planning a feedback survey of commuters as part of its "customer satisfaction week".

The survey - first of its kind since the Delhi Metro started operations in 2002 - comes after a series of incidents like technical breakdown that led to commuters being stranded for almost an hour in the Udyog Bhawan metro station, the exit of the concessionaire from the Airport link and delays in its most crowded corridors like the Yellow (Jahangirpuri to HUDA city centre) and Blue (Dwarka sector 21 to Noida/Vaishali) lines.

"We will be observing customer satisfaction week from July 15-21 during which commuters will be asked for their feedback on various aspects of operations, their expectations and improvements required to make our service better", said a Delhi Metro spokesperson.

While a number of activities are planned for the week, the "satisfaction survey" will be conducted in the top 22 metro stations in the network in terms of ridership. It will be the first time that the DMRC will ask for feedback from its growing ridership, which now touches the 22 lakh figure.

"The survey will include seven aspects of Delhi Metro services, such as availability, accessibility, information availability, quality of service, customer care, comfort, safety and security," said the Delhi Metro spokesperson. The stations to be covered include Rajiv Chowk (6,14,712 footfall), Chandni Chowk (66,243), Anand Vihar (28,374), Saket (37,014) and many others.

"Recently, many new initiatives were implemented like reservation of more seats for elderly and disabled commuters, raising awareness about them by conducting special drives on Saturdays and Sundays, imparting sign language training to station staff to facilitate hearing impaired passengers", he said.

During the week, other activities like smart card promotion drive, women coach drive, reverse journey drive, spreading awareness about the use of lifts and escalators, making queues at token counters, will be undertaken, the spokesperson added.