Using AI to welcome and support customers

The Mount Washington Cog Railway, known affectionately as “The Cog,” is the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway. Located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, it has been carrying visitors toward the summit of Mount Washington since 1869 and remains one of New England’s most distinctive attractions.

As a high-interest destination, The Cog receives steady demand from customers looking for details before planning a trip. Visitors want quick answers about ticket availability, schedules, holiday operations, food service, weather, and what to expect during the experience.

That demand created a customer support challenge for Rob Arey, Director of Marketing, and the rest of the team. Phone calls and emails arrived throughout the day, and when inquiries came in after hours, many went unanswered until staff could catch up. As the backlog grew, the team needed a way to respond in real time without compromising the Cog brand experience.

The challenge

The Cog needed a support system that could keep up with a large volume of visitor questions while preserving a friendly, helpful experience.

The team needed to:

• resolve customer inquiries in a timely manner
• reduce the email and phone-call backlog
• provide support after hours, not just during staffed times
• maintain a personal, user-friendly experience for visitors

Without that support layer, customers had to wait for answers to basic but important questions, which made trip planning harder and increased pressure on the internal team.

The solution

To address the problem, Rob Arey turned to AskHandle and launched a customized AI Agent for The Cog website. The AskHandle team set up the system with a Cog-specific knowledge base so visitors could get answers immediately, any time of day.

The implementation was intentionally lightweight for the Cog team. AskHandle configured the AI Agent and organized the customer intents in advance, so the Cog did not need to build a custom AI system or train models internally. Instead, the team could simply provide the information they wanted the AI to use, even in straightforward formats such as Word documents.

That made it possible to support a wide range of recurring questions without introducing additional operational complexity.

The system also kept improving over time. When the AI encountered a question it could not yet answer, it could provide a contact prompt and flag that inquiry for follow-up. Once the team supplied the correct information, AskHandle could incorporate that intent into the knowledge base so future visitors would get an answer automatically.

The result

AskHandle became the first stop for customer support on The Cog website. Visitors can now receive answers instantly across a range of common topics, including:

• ticket purchases
• holiday train schedules
• onboard food service
• weather-related questions
• general trip planning information

Most importantly, the customer inquiry backlog that had built up across phone and email was no longer the same operational burden.

AskHandle AI has been great at answering customer questions.

Rob Arey, Director of Marketing

Today, The Cog directs website traffic toward AskHandle AI for customer service. While phone and email remain available, visitors increasingly choose the AI Agent because it provides quick, user-friendly answers right away. At the same time, the system continues to improve as new customer questions appear.

AskHandle gave The Cog a practical way to welcome visitors, support trip planning, and maintain a higher level of responsiveness without expanding the support team.