A Day with Cape Air on Cape Cod: Clear Skies, Connected Communities
By The Cloud Contact Center
I got to Hyannis on a hot, humid New England night. The streetlights looked softer, and the salty smell of the Atlantic carried through the air. When the sun came up, the Cape was fully awake. The harbour was busy, the white clapboard houses were clean, and the hydrangeas were everywhere, bursting with colours you can’t ignore.
The mood at the Hyannis airport was different from the busy, chaotic atmosphere of a big international airport. I met a couple who were going to Nantucket for a friend’s “last hurrah” before he sold his house and left the island. It was a small, private moment, but it said everything about our client, Cape Air. This isn’t just an airline; it’s a lifeline for the area and a way to get to important events in life.
We didn’t just film at Cape Air’s corporate office and the Hyannis airport to show how the company has changed. We also went to Tom Rocharz’s house to see him. He is a key leader in their customer operations. During the day, he is kept company by two great co-workers: Jackson, a Great Pyrenees, and Jarvis, a big Golden Retriever. With the Cloud Contact Center, Tom has made the operation more flexible, so he can go for a walk with his dog and still keep an eye on things. He wants balance for himself and for his team.
The brand is based on the customer experience.
Tom didn’t just get ready to talk business; he got excited. He told me that Cape Air’s internal motto is “MOCHA HaGoTDI.” It stands for “Making Our Customers Happy and Having a Good Time Doing It.” That phrase says a lot about the airline’s character, but how they followed through on that philosophy said even more about what they needed to do to run their business.
Tom said, “I want passengers to feel special when they fly with Cape Air. You don’t have to share a plane with 30, 50, or 150 other people. It’s a very personal experience. A lot of the time, you’re right behind the pilot. Our brand is based on how our customers feel. That’s our job.”
But keeping that high-touch feel means having high-tech speed. Tom made it clear that the team’s culture was to move quickly: “We want to be quick on our feet. We don’t want to wait for technology to change if it has to. We want to do it ourselves.”
He showed me the huge operation that was hidden behind the small-town charm: three brick-and-mortar contact centers in Rockland, Maine; Rutland, Vermont; and Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. They also have a distributed remote team that supports an airline with about 600 to 700 employees, in addition to these physical hubs. They are a regional carrier on paper. In real life, they are a lifeline that connects small towns in New England and eastern Montana to big cities like Boston and Billings. They also help people in Vieques and the Virgin Islands get to appointments and services that can’t wait.
Tom said, “We know we’re a lifeline for people. Cape Air is giving people what they need to live and also what they want to do.”
To keep that lifeline, their Cloud Contact Center must be reliable at all times.
Cape Cod, Up Close
During the day, Cape Cod is like a postcard, especially during peak hydrangea season. But postcards don’t show how useful and tough it is. Ferries are cancelled when the seas are rough. Summer tourists are stuck in traffic on the roads. The weather messes up flight plans.
That’s why this story isn’t just about planes; it’s also about access. It’s about making sure a grandmother can get to a specialist doctor’s appointment from a town far away. It has to do with college students getting back to school on time. It’s about that Nantucket send-off; friends can be there because the flights make it possible.
Natalia Xavier, who started out as a ticket agent and worked her way up to management at Cape Air, said it best:
“We are a community-based airline. We help areas that don’t get enough service and may not have other ways to get around. We are giving them a lifeline.”
Because the stakes are so high, the level of service is set very high on purpose. Natalia added, “We want to make sure we go above and beyond what people expect so they know they can trust us.” Their Cloud Contact Center is like the nervous system of the whole operation because it helps them communicate and build trust.
The Turning Point: Why Should You Connect in the Cloud?
The path to stability wasn’t always easy. When Tom first started working there, Cape Air had just decided to get rid of an old phone system that was still in use. It was held together by spare parts that were found on eBay, and that’s not an exaggeration. Recording calls was hit or miss, monitoring was hard, and the callback features didn’t work. The team needed a partner who could help them grow into digital channels (voice, chat, SMS) without raising their operating costs too much.
They knew they had to move to a modern Cloud Contact Center in order to live and grow. Tom was very clear about what they were looking for:
“When Cape Air was looking for a new phone service provider, the first thing they looked for was affordability, and the second thing was reliability. We needed a phone system that would work well and last a long time.”
They looked around the market and found their answer with us. Tom says, “Cape Air’s partnership with Connect In Cloud has been nothing short of impressive, strong, and long-lasting.”
The move to the Connect In Cloud Cloud Contact Center happened in stages. It started at headquarters, then moved to the Northeast, and finally grew to include Montana and the Caribbean. The change only took weeks, not months, even though it affected a lot of places. All of a sudden, working from home wasn’t just a choice; it was an upgrade. Supervisors could check quality, coach agents in real time, and get analytics without having to file tickets with the IT department.
What Changed: Important Results
People, not software tools, make great service, and Cape Air’s team will be the first to tell you that. But the right technology stack makes it possible to give great service over and over again, even when operations are spread out over islands, time zones, and seasons. Cape Air has seen huge improvements in their metrics since they started using the Connect In Cloud Cloud Contact Center:
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90% fewer calls that were dropped: Customers are no longer hanging up out of frustration.
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Average hold time is down 95%, so passengers get answers faster.
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80% fewer employees leaving the contact center: Agents are happier with their tools, so they stay longer.
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The average speed of answer has gone up by 85%, which means that things are running much more smoothly.
Along with those big wins, the day-to-day work got better as well. Our Cloud Contact Center now helps supervisors coach agents quickly by giving them access to live transcriptions and quality analytics. Agents deal with more work with less stress because they can keep queues under control and solve problems on the first call.
Natalia likes how the new system combines AI with human care. She says, “AI is an amazing tool, but I think the human touch is the key.” The technology takes care of the friction, and the people take care of the empathy.
