After railways minister Su resh Prabhu became a twe et-heart follo wing right in the footsteps of Sushma Swa raj, he used social media to revamp railway customer service across India. What started as one-to-one help through tweets has now turned into a complete 24X7 operation.

The efforts and success by railways has piqued the curiosity of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A), which is set to study how the Indian Railways is reaching out to people and solving their issues on the go, with problems as diverse as security or food.

Professor Sunil Maheshwari, IIM-A faculty in human resource management (HRM), said that he sees the use of social media in railways as innovative, and a thorough research on it may benefit public at large. Maheshwari, who recently got approval from the ministry to do the academic exercise, be lieves that the use of social me dia in addressing grievances of passengers can make a na tional impact. “In a mega orga nization like the railways, even making a small change is so dif ficult. It is a big thing (social media management) to pull off in such an organization,“ he sa id. “I am going to study the use of social media like Twitter to improve customer services.Use of social media in railways looks very simple on the face of it, but behind it there must be a big team and organizational support,“ Maheshwari told TOI.