Shipley Energy | Avoca Tackles a Dynamic Fuel Market

About Shipley Energy

Founded in 1929, Shipley Energy is an energy distributor headquartered in York, Pennsylvania. It sells heating oil, propane, electricity, natural gas, and diesel, plus HVAC services, to customers ranging from residential to large commercial and industrial accounts in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The Problem: Answering every call in a seasonal business

Shipley's business swings hard with the weather. When it gets cold, call volume becomes nearly impossible to keep up with, and most heating oil customers still prefer to call in their orders.

In past winters, Shipley staffed to a practical sweet spot, ran "code reds" where anyone available jumped on the phones, and called back customers who had given up after 20 to 30 minutes on hold. The company was already outpacing competitors on hold times, but the goal was to reduce that even more.

Deploying Avoca: Shipley's AI Agent, Sarah

Shipley's processes are complex and vary by brand. As Paul Maruszewski, IT Director, put it: "We are not a one size fits all shop. Our different divisions all operate a little bit differently from each other. So it's very, very important that they are flexible and meeting us where we need to be, so that we can support our customers."

Shipley deployed Sarah, Avoca's AI assistant, for inbound call handling, starting with Cap City Oil, the brand with the highest share of will-call customers who phone in their orders.

Sarah introduces herself, asks how she can help, and listens to determine the customer's needs. She searches for the customer's phone number through caller ID to identify their account, so by the time she responds, she already knows who she's talking to.

Built for the complexity of energy

The hard part was the business itself: fuel prices are dynamic and change daily, and Shipley's brands price differently, some with a flat price per gallon, others with tiered pricing based on how many gallons a customer orders.

Sarah had to handle all of it accurately. She identifies the caller by phone number, pulls their account in real time, quotes live pricing specific to their area, calculates the total, and hands off to the team.

• "There's a live integration between Sarah and our backend systems. When a customer comes in, they give us their address, we bounce that address off of our API, we know the price in their area, and we're able to give them live pricing." — Paul Maruszewski, IT Director

The Avoca Impact:

Sarah handles the complexity of Shipley's business, accurately and in real time.

• Peak-day phone capacity: 20 to 30 minute holds on the coldest days → 0 hold time (~2x calls answered)
• Inbound call handling: One third of calls handled end to end by Sarah
• Self serve sentiment: 60% of customers actively choose the bot when given the option