How to make services truly resonate with users through the "integrated delivery and installation" model?
In the past, the consumption experience of large home appliances was "fragmented".
When your washing machine breaks down and you need to use it urgently, you quickly place an order for a new one online. The old unit is removed quickly, but the new one will not be delivered for several days; when the goods finally arrive, you have to reschedule the installation, and the technician's schedule will be delayed for a few more days. After a whole week of hassle, the new washing machine still hasn't been installed, so you have to wash clothes by hand.
This is a long-standing pain point in the home appliance and furniture industry: the separation of delivery and installation makes consumers wear out their patience in repeated appointments and passive waiting.
Looking at the present, this experience is being rewritten. If you place an order for a washing machine on JD.com in the morning, the technician will deliver it to your door and complete the installation synchronously in the afternoon at the earliest. No need to make appointments, no need to wait, no need to contact multiple people. You will find that buying "large items" can actually be very simple.
This is not a limited-time benefit provided during the "JD Home Appliances 18th Anniversary Celebration", but a service experience that consumers can enjoy every day in the future.
Between "waiting" and "not waiting", there is a "wall" that JD spent several years gradually breaking through.
The thickness of this wall comes from the long-term separation of the two systems of delivery and installation, as well as the layers of resistance from brand authorization, system interconnection, engineer training, and resource scheduling in peak and off seasons. JD chose to put in hard work to break through: building a self-operated engineer team of tens of thousands of people, a national training and certification system, and an elastic scheduling network for cross-provincial support... After several years of efforts, JD reconnected the two long-separated links of delivery and installation.
At present, the home appliance and furniture industry has entered an era of "delivery experience" competition. After the goods are delivered, the real test has only just begun.
Where there are pain points, there are solutions
Consumers buy air conditioners to get cold air on hot summer days; buy washing machines to stop washing clothes by hand; buy smart toilets to avoid the icy feeling when sitting on the toilet in winter mornings.
In essence, when consumers buy home appliance and furniture products, they are not buying the machine itself, but the life experience brought by the machine, preferably an experience that can be used immediately, with no hassle and quickly.
However, this simple wish has not been realized for a very long time.
The person in charge of the air conditioner service project of JD Home Appliance & Furniture Business Group shared a scene that left a deep impression on him. One summer in Beijing was extremely hot. When he visited shopping malls offline, he witnessed a customer standing in front of a brand counter shouting: "Whoever can install the air conditioner for me this afternoon, I will buy from that brand." When the weather is hot to a certain extent, price does not matter, brand does not matter, and installation timeliness becomes the only decision-making factor.
This is not a joke, but a real consumption scene that actually happened.
The data confirms consumers' anxiety. During the peak sales season of air conditioners, the average waiting time from delivery to installation in the industry is as long as 2.5 days. This number seems not long, but it is extremely lengthy in the sweltering summer. Consumers pay first, wait for delivery, and then wait for installation. Even if the air conditioner has been delivered to their homes, they still have to wait for installation in repeated phone calls, and have to endure two more sweltering nights.
This is a true portrayal of the service gap in the home appliance and furniture industry. The consumption chain of large items naturally includes multiple links: delivery, door-to-door access, installation, debugging, and old unit removal and recycling. If any link breaks, "expectation" will turn into "torment".
JD saw this service breakpoint earlier than the entire industry.
The person in charge of the delivery and installation service project of JD Home Appliance & Furniture Business Group recalled that JD launched the integrated delivery and installation service precisely based on user consumption demands. At that time, users who bought TVs on JD's platform could not get technicians to install the products long after the goods arrived, and complaint calls kept coming in.
This pain point is obvious enough, so it must be solved immediately.
In December 2021, JD first piloted the "integrated delivery and installation" service for the TV category, covering tens of thousands of fourth-level townships in 11 provinces and cities. The delivery staff confirmed on site whether the user had installation needs, and completed the wall mounting and debugging in one visit. Although it was a pilot, the overall positive rating reached 99%, which verified that users had strong demand for integrated delivery and installation services.
In the following five years, the integrated delivery and installation service expanded from TVs to nearly a hundred categories such as air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, smart toilets, and electronic locks, extending from cities to nearly 99% of the county-level administrative regions across the country.
In 2026, JD further optimized the service timeliness slice during the peak air conditioner season into the "6+6" mode, realizing that units delivered before 15:00 will be installed on the same day, and units delivered after 15:00 will be installed the next day, which improved delivery and installation efficiency and user experience.
The value brought by the integrated delivery and installation service capability has also been verified on the brand side.
In the past, many brand merchants suffered from user complaints because delivery and installation belonged to two separate systems, leading to long installation schedules after the goods arrived in peak seasons. The problems mainly focused on long waiting time and troublesome multi-party appointments. These problems often lower positive ratings, increase return and rejection rates, and directly damage brand reputation and repurchase rate.
Since Gree launched in-depth cooperation with JD on integrated delivery and installation, the two sides have jointly realized "installation on the day of delivery", creating an industry service benchmark of "completing installation as fast as 1 hour after the air conditioner arrives". As the first air conditioner brand to access JD's "integrated old unit removal, delivery and installation" service, Gree's service timeliness rate increased by 9% year-on-year, which is 31% higher than the industry average.
In the words of the relevant person in charge of Gree: "From small-scale pilots to national rollout, and then to the integrated delivery and installation service withstanding order pressure during peak promotion seasons, the positive rating of performance has improved significantly, which proves that the model is feasible."
As the person in charge of the delivery and installation service project of JD Home Appliance & Furniture Business Group said, over the past 18 years, the unchanging core of JD in the field of home appliance and furniture services has always been only one thing: taking user experience as the core.
When the industry is still discussing how to deliver the "last mile", JD has reconnected all links, and tried to assign them to the same person, the same team, and complete them in one visit, so that users can say goodbye to long and painful waiting. This is precisely a very forward-looking step taken by JD: it is not solving a delivery problem, but truly implementing the "buy and use immediately" experience.
"Integrated delivery and installation" delivers not only products, but also services
Deep in the vast forest of the Greater Khingan Range, 56-year-old forest ranger Tian Guifu has stuck to his post on the watchtower for more than ten years. His wife accompanied him to take root in the deep mountains and washed clothes by hand all year round, which made him feel distressed for more than ten years. In the past, he did not dare to place an order for a washing machine. The mountain roads were rugged and distant, and he was not sure whether large home appliances could be transported to the mountain and whether the machine would be damaged by bumps.
In recent years, the Amur Forestry Bureau has continued to promote the upgrading and transformation of watchtowers, opened vegetable gardens, drilled deep wells, renovated residences, and expanded communication infrastructure, solving practical problems such as difficult drinking water, difficult electricity use, and inconvenient travel one by one. As living conditions get better day by day, Tian Guifu's long-cherished wish for a washing machine finally has the possibility to come true.
During this year's JD Home Appliances 18th Anniversary Celebration, the Forestry Bureau equipped the forest rangers' living area with home appliances. Tian Guifu did not expect that this "big guy" sent from JD Logistics's large-item warehouse in Shenyang traveled 2000 kilometers, crossed the forest, drove into the deep mountains, and was finally delivered to the foot of the watchtower deep in the Greater Khingan Range.
JD's installation technician completed delivery, installation and debugging all in one visit. "I really didn't expect that JD's installation technician managed to carry the washing machine up the mountain in the deep old forest. Our living conditions in the mountains are getting better and better." Looking at the brand new washing machine in front of them, the couple still found it hard to believe. The hard days of washing clothes by hand are over, and Tian Guifu's words are full of steadiness. This is something that was impossible to imagine in the past.
But at JD, this is not an isolated case. The reason why these "impossible" orders can be fulfilled is not because of a miracle, but because JD spent five years solidly building a set of hard-core service systems.
The person in charge of the delivery and installation service project of JD Home Appliance & Furniture Business Group divides the evolution of integrated delivery and installation into three stages: the first stage is the exploration period of service business, solving basic problems such as allowing users to view the service process and technician contact information on the APP; the second stage is the pilot period of integrated delivery and installation, starting from the TV category and gradually rolling out service capabilities across the country; the third stage is the construction period of large-scale service capabilities, bringing more categories into the scope, polishing the terminal network, and establishing industry standards.
JD looks further ahead. When its peers still regard service as an after-sales link, it has regarded service as the business itself.
This systematic capability can be disassembled from four dimensions.
In terms of coverage, the difficulty of large-item delivery lies in the "service breakpoint" in the "last mile". Most platforms only deliver goods to urban areas or townships, and villagers need to rent vehicles for transshipment by themselves. The bumpy mountain roads are likely to cause damage to the goods; after finally transporting the goods home, they have to find installation personnel by themselves. The high handling and installation costs in remote villages make many elderly villagers daunted.
Through the mode of "cloud warehouse + satellite warehouse + integrated delivery and installation", JD has completely sunk its services, covering nearly 99% of the county-level administrative regions across the country, and extending to the vast township areas.
Nowadays, JD's installation technicians have footprints in extreme scenarios such as Ngari, Tibet at an altitude of 4900 meters, Yushu, Qinghai with a one-way distance of 1200 kilometers, and Turpan, Xinjiang with a surface temperature of 89.2°C, truly realizing that "where products can be sold, JD can deliver and install them there".
In terms of categories, JD has expanded from the pilot TV category in 2021 to nearly a hundred categories including electronic locks and bathroom cabinets, cooperating with more than 500 home appliance and furniture brands.
For the platform, adding a new category means that the training system, installation standards, and scheduling logic behind it must be completely reconstructed and adapted. For example, air conditioner installation requires drilling holes, smart toilet installation requires modifying water and electricity circuits, and electronic locks involve door body transformation.
In just five years, JD has achieved smooth operation of nearly a hundred complex categories. It does not rely on simply adding more staff, but on three hard strengths: strong standardization capability, excellent system reusability, and the persistence of "taking user experience as the core".
In terms of performance, in the traditional mode, delivery and installation are separated from each other, and consumers need to wait for delivery and then make a new appointment for installation. Through "integrated delivery and installation", JD has coordinated the links of delivery, installation and debugging, shortening the average installation waiting time to 0.88 days, and realizing "installation upon delivery" for categories such as flat-panel TVs and electronic locks.
This efficient performance has even forced profound changes in the industrial chain. Leading brands represented by Gree will now pre-adapt to JD's delivery and installation process when launching new products, realizing deep coordination between products and service standards.
"Good products with standardized services will make the complete experience of buying home appliances online solid." The relevant person in charge of Gree said.
In terms of system, the ultimate competitiveness of integrated delivery and installation lies not only in wide coverage, but also in stable service. JD has built a self-operated engineer team of tens of thousands of people, covering multiple tracks such as home appliances, furniture, building materials, and new energy.
In 2026, JD further launched a recruitment plan for 20,000 engineers, and simultaneously implemented the "intelligent fair dispatching" and "working hour pricing" salary system to ensure the stability of engineer supply and the consistency of service quality from the source.
Over the past five years, from keen insight to small-scale pilots, and then to full-scale large-scale expansion, JD has gone through all kinds of hardships, only to provide users with the ultimate service experience. This is exactly the value that JD always adheres to: putting user experience first, and filling the long-neglected service gaps in the home appliance and furniture industry at all costs.
"Integrated delivery and installation" is the best practice of this value. It is not just a service, but also reflects an attitude: install the products as soon as they are delivered, so that consumers can "use the products as soon as they arrive".
Resolve stuck points before service delivery
The integrated delivery and installation service is a "heavy business". In the traditional account book of the home appliance and furniture industry, service departments such as delivery and installation are regarded as "cost centers". Every extra cent invested means one cent less profit.
But on JD's account book, a set of data is rewriting this formula.
Hisense Washing Machine has cooperated with JD's integrated delivery and installation for nearly three years, with a cumulative delivery of 200,000 units, and the annual year-on-year growth has continued to exceed 20%. TCL TV's data is more convincing: 1.5 million users have enjoyed the integrated delivery and installation service in 3 years, and the national delivery and installation area coverage exceeds 99%.
When service certainty becomes a reason for consumers to place orders, integrated delivery and installation is no longer an after-sales cost, but a real incremental engine.
What is more noteworthy is that now JD is no longer satisfied with solving the pain point of "products delivered but not installed", it has started to think one step ahead of users.
Take air conditioners as an example. In the past, the standard path was users placing orders, waiting for delivery, technicians coming to drill holes, wall mounting and debugging. During the peak air conditioner installation season, queuing for drilling is the core bottleneck restricting installation efficiency.
JD captured this pain point. In 202