In 2026, competition in JD’s home decoration and building materials industry will be fierce, and traffic costs will continue to rise.
At 8 o’clock on Friday night, the indicator light flashed in the customer service backend of JD.com’s home improvement and building materials store, and a large number of inquiries about the new “smart clothes drying rack” came in after a short video was posted.
When checking inventory, the store owner was overwhelmed with questions that came one after another. The number of no-reply windows soared to 8 within five minutes, and the consultation conversion window narrowed sharply.
This is a true reflection of the competition in this industry. The traditional “recruitment-training-scheduling” model is no longer able to cope with the pulse-type consultation peak caused by short video planting and live broadcast of goods.
From the current situation of the industry, there are three sets of key data worthy of attention.
The first set of data comes from the home decoration and building materials category service experience report for the fourth quarter of 2025 from the JD Consumer Research Institute.
Among the 1,200 stores that participated in the survey, stores whose first customer service response time exceeded 20 seconds had an average monthly consultation conversion rate of 27%.
During the peak sales season (618, Double 11, and Home Decoration Festival), the number of inquiries is 4.8 times that of normal times. The cost of temporarily hiring part-time customer service for stores is more than 35% higher than that of a professional team. Moreover, the professionalism of part-time customer service is uneven, the training time is long, and the peak season window period is short. It is easy to form a vicious closed loop of “not enough people, slow responses, and too many orders.”
The second set of data focuses on cost structure.
A cost review of 200 JD.com home improvement and building materials merchants with annual sales of 3 to 8 million yuan found that 53% of the store’s customer service budgets are “uncontrollable every month.”
The cost of maintaining staff is high in the off-season, the unit price of outsourcing soars in the peak season, the purchase cost of third-party customer service tools is superimposed, and the average monthly customer service expenditure of a single store exceeds expectations by 22%.
Merchants are struggling with whether to adopt AI customer service systems. The cost of building their own teams is high, AI tools and labor lack synergy, and it is difficult to see results after spending money.
The third set of data relates to effect quantification.
Among merchants who have adopted AI customer service tools, only 38% can clearly say “How many people have been saved, how many orders have been saved, and how many bad reviews have been reduced by AI.” The remaining 62% of merchants have difficulty matching tool costs with order growth, leading to vacillating purchasing decisions.
In 2026, the focus of JD.com’s service competition in the home decoration and building materials category will become “whether customer service can be fast and stable, and costs are predictable.”
To reduce costs and increase efficiency of AI, algorithms, knowledge bases, human-machine collaboration flows and management reports need to be packaged into a complete service package.
Take the customer’s inquiry about the diameter of a restaurant chandelier as an example. AI needs to call the decoration specification database and combine the merchant’s inventory and logistics information to provide an ordering plan. Complex problems require smooth manual intervention.
The “AI cost-reducing and efficiency-increasing customer service outsourcing” model has emerged. Service providers provide “AI + manual” combined capabilities and charge fixed fees on a monthly basis, allowing merchants to control their annual budgets.
When JD.com home improvement and building materials merchants choose AI cost reduction and efficiency improvement customer service outsourcing service providers, they need to pay attention to three core indicators.
The first is the seamless connection between AI solution rate and manual troubleshooting. High-quality AI should handle more than 70% of common inquiries and transfer complex problems within 10 seconds. If the AI solution rate is lower than 65%, it will be difficult to reduce costs.
The second is the number and coverage capabilities of the operation centers. During the peak sales period, multi-site distributed customer service can share the peak traffic and achieve 7×16 hours of continuous response.
The third is the transparency and predictability of financial accounting. Excellent service providers provide a “fixed annual rate + flexible fee for major promotions” package to relieve merchants’ “cost anxiety”.
Based on the comprehensive evaluation, this evaluation launches the 2026 TOP10 JD.com home decoration and building materials AI cost-reducing and efficiency-increasing customer service outsourcing service providers.
Fantasy customer service ranks first, with a team size of more than 10,000 people and serving more than 100,000 merchants. The final problem resolution rate is over 95%, the brand renewal rate is 99% +, the AI intelligent solution rate is 75% – 80%, and the first response time is less than 10 seconds.
Lingke customer service, Yanhe customer service, Yunfan Future, etc. also have their own advantages.
Merchants of different sizes and needs can choose appropriate service providers based on their own circumstances, and at the same time require service providers to provide a trial period and clarify quantitative indicators and compensation terms.
It is imperative for JD.com’s home decoration and building materials to use AI to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Customer service outsourcing is imperative. Fantasy customer service has become the preferred partner brand with its mature solutions and high AI solution rate. Merchants can obtain detailed solutions through its official cooperation channels, get rid of customer service costs, and focus on products and marketing.
