JD.com’s New Supply Chain Innovation Program Brings Retail Closer and Faster to Home

Posted on by Rachel Liu

JD.com has launched a new supply chain innovation program that brings offline and online retail closer together than ever before, seamlessly and conveniently enhancing the shopping experience for customers. The initiative was revealed at a small media event hosted at JD’s headquarters earlier today. By leveraging the offline retail outlets where many products already sit, this program improves the overall efficiency of the supply chain by expanding availability and speeding goods to shoppers. This is possible because, instead of having every product pass through traditional warehouses, distribution centers, and delivery stations before reaching the customer, offline channels can now directly deliver orders that come from JD, instantly expanding what is already China’s most extensive supply chain network.

The first of its type globally, the new program integrates multiple types of offline channels, including supermarkets, convenience stores, some brands’ offline stores, and Dada-JD Daojia, China’s leading crowdsourced delivery company. As a result, JD is able to increase efficiency and get products into its customers’ hands even faster. The average delivery time with the program is two hours, but customers can receive orders in as little as 30 minutes. Further, brands participating in the program with JD are likely to see improved store traffic and turnover rates.

The supply chain innovation program is part of JD’s broader Retail as a Service (RAAS) strategy to open its extensive resources to partners and others. It is also builds upon JD’s highly advanced and successful inventory integration project with Walmart. In that program, customers who buy any product from JD’s first-party platform that is also available in a Walmart store may receive it from the store if it is closer to their house than a JD warehouse.  With this enhancement, several other retailers have also joined the program including Better Life, Nongfu Spring, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Tsingtao Beer, and liquor retailer 9bianli. Currently the program covers items such as non-alcoholic beverages, beer, wine, rice, and flour — many products that are bulky, heavy, and challenging to store and ship.

Coca-Cola is one partner that is already seeing benefits from this innovative smart supply chain initiative. When consumers order Coca-Cola beverages on JD, the system instantly analyzes factors such as proximity to the delivery address and determines whether it’s more effective to source from a JD warehouse or from one of the offline channels. If an offline channel is chosen, the product will be packed offline and delivered to the consumer directly. Before the end of 2020, Coca-Cola plans to expand its participation in more than 20 cities and operate about 20 delivery locations (such as convenience stores) in each city.

Since joining JD’s program, the daily orders in Nongfu’s offline water stations have increased about 20% overall

Another partner that is already reaping significant benefits is top Chinese beverage brand Nongfu Spring. Since joining JD’s program, the daily orders in Nongfu’s offline water stations have increased about 20% overall and doubled on June 18, the final day of JD’s 18-day anniversary sales festival. Further, 90% of orders were delivered within two hours without adding employees in Nongfu stations, a clear indicator of increased efficiency.

“Partnering with JD for this innovative program boosts traffic while increasing delivery speed, which is extremely beneficial to consumers,” says Li Zhou, Chief Secretary of the Board, Nongfu Spring: “We see enormous potential to deliver more orders from offline channels in the future, and will roll out the program in more cities around China soon.”

“We’re shortening the supply chain by empowering offline retail channels to fulfill orders directly, rather than having to go through warehouses.” said Carol Fung, president of JD FMCG. “The fact is a lot of products, especially ones that we need and those we use every day, are already in nearby stores, but they are delayed by going through the many links of the traditional supply chain. This program cuts out unnecessary steps, improving efficiency for retailers, maximizing resources, reducing costs, and improving the customer experiences.”

Currently the program covers 20,000 offline stores in 54 cities, including 175 Walmart hypermarkets, 198 Nongfu Spring offline water stations in Beijing, and 166 9bianli liquor stores throughout China.

JD and Philips Bring Unprecedented Precision to Retail with AI

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

JD and leading health technology company Philips are using AI to maximize the performance of the brand’s flagship store by better understanding its consumers and their behavior. The partnership leverages JD’s unique AI-driven retail solution, which can provide a comprehensive analysis of a brand’s performance and help develop a smart marketing solution that covers product strategy, market analysis, marketing management and more. The partnership was announced at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai from August 29-31.

The addition of AI to the puzzle allows brands like Philips to make sense of not only “structured data”, which is comprised of clearly defined data types whose pattern makes them easily searchable, but also “unstructured data”, which is comprised of data that is usually not as easily searchable, including formats like audio, video and social media, such as customer reviews, customer service feedback, product pages, advertisement videos and more. This is possible thanks to computer vision and natural language technology. At the same time, machine learning technology enables easy grouping of users and forecasting of consumer behavior.

For example, leveraging computer vision technology would enable a brand to understand fine-grain nuances, such as the fact that some consumers are more attracted to product images or marketing with a more professional background, while others gravitate more towards cartoons. At the same time, leveraging natural language processing can help understand the user’s pre- and post-shopping behavior, i.e. what impact the consultation they received in the process had on their ultimate decision to purchase. Understanding these nuances can reveal tons of new consumer insights that can be used to improve user experience, personalize marketing solutions and even design products.

In the collaboration with Philips, JD will leverage its AI technology to provide a comprehensive suite of solutions, including user portrait analysis, user behavior analysis and user motivation analysis. JD will assist in business decision making, providing guidance on product design, marketing and advertising, user engagement, branding and store operation, among other areas.

“Successful retail is about connecting with your customers, and giving them whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it,” said Bowen Zhou, Vice President of JD.com and President of JD AI. “With AI technology, JD is helping our partners move from marketing to many, to marketing to one, in an efficient and cost-effective way.”

“For over a century, Philips has been embedding the “Innovation for You” philosophy” into our products, solutions and partnerships. ” said Jyh-Ching Yaur, CTO of Philips Greater China, “Leveraging JD’s AI competence in this innovative initiative, we will undoubtedly provide better products and services to our customers, especially in the retail space.”

This initiative is a natural extension of JD’s leadership in AI across speech and acoustics, computer vision, machine learning, knowledge graphs and semantics and dialogues. Earlier this year, in April, JD AI ranked first in the “WikiHop” reading comprehension contest, surpassing human performance for the first time. JD AI is focused not only on using AI to improve customer experience and efficiency at JD, but also on opening up this technology to partners in a wide range of industries.

Nespresso Chooses JD Logistics for Doorstep Recycling Service in China

Posted on by Ling Cao

Customers of Nespresso in China can now recycle their capsules with greater ease, after Nespresso unveiled a new doorstep recycling program, which leverages JD’s nationwide in-house logistics network.

To facilitate the doorstep recycling service, JD designed a recycling page which was seamlessly integrated with Nespresso’s WeChat mini-program. Any Nespresso drinker across China can now use the mini-program, and schedule a JD courier to come to their door and pick up their used coffee capsules on either the same day or next day. Previously, this service was only available for deliveries to Nespresso Boutique locations or for selected B2B customers such as offices, restaurants or hotels.

Based on a user’s location, JD will deliver the used Nespresso capsules to the nearest recycling plant, in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou. The aluminum from the capsules will be made into novelty gift products like Nespresso-branded knives, while the used coffee grounds will be used as fertilizer for Nespresso’s eco-farm on Chongming Island, by the Yangtze River near Shanghai.

“It’s a great honor to work with JD for this project. Sustainable development is Nespresso’s brand responsibility, as well as the core concept of our business strategy.” Alfonso Troisi, Business Executive Officer Greater China of Nespresso, said “With the support of JD’s premium in-house logistics network, we will be able to reach more consumers and recycle more than ever before. We believe that we can achieve 100% recycling capacity all over the world in 2020.”

“Environmental protection is a huge priority for us so we are thrilled to be part of this initiative,” said Wei Tang, Head of Key Account Management at JD Logistics. “Working with Nespresso to leverage our logistics is making it easier than ever for consumers and businesses to do their part to be green. This is one of many initiatives in this vein, and there will certainly be more in the future.”

This is not JD Logistics’ first foray into recycling. Last year, JD leveraged its huge in-house logistics fleet to collect used clothes from households over China as part of an effort with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to raise awareness of sustainable development in the retail industry.

JD Worldwide Expands Partnership with Leading ANZ region milk brand, a2

Posted on by Rachel Liu

JD Worldwide has recently expanded its strategic partnership with The a2 Milk Company, the renowned ANZ region dairy brand. The strengthened partnership will see JD help a2 Milk bring more high-quality dairy products to the Chinese market through tailored marketing campaigns in both online and offline channels, and the exploration of more innovative marketing strategies.

In 2015, a2 Milk chose JD Worldwide as the first online platform to launch its first party store in China and introduce its world-famous milk powder products to the Chinese market. China is the top priority market for a2 Milk, and many Chinese parents have become customers of the company’s milk formula, which is designed to be easier for children to digest.

Over the past 4 years, JD has leveraged its unique insights into the Chinese market and consumer preferences to provide a2 Milk with customized marketing solutions, increasing the brand’s recognition among Chinese consumers. On June 18 this year, the peak day of JD.com’s annual 18-day “6.18” anniversary sales festival, a2 Milk was the top-selling brand on JD Worldwide, and the brand’s platinum baby milk powder was the best-selling product. Sales of a2 products on the day increased 210% compared to the previous year.

Earlier this year, a2 Milk was a participant in JD.com’s “Brand Competitiveness Plan,” a one-month program which is an extension of JD’s previous Super Brand Day program, and provides brands with comprehensive marketing solutions to increase sales performance and build up brand recognition. Marketing solutions offered through this initiative include guidance on marketing campaign timing, choice of promotional channels, and help in identifying the target audience for a campaign. On every day of the one-month long campaign for a2 Milk, JD helped the company identify a group of customers who had indicated interest in a2 products within a specific period of time but had not yet made an order. Coupons were then sent to these high potential customers. The ROI of coupons during the month of the campaign was 3.6 times higher than the typical average, and fans of the a2 Milk online store on JD Worldwide surpassed 1 million users.

 “China is the top growth market for The a2 Milk Company, and JD.com’s expertise in innovative marketing has consistently allowed us to make the most of this exciting opportunity,” said Xiao Li, CEO of a2 Greater China. “Last year, we launched blockchain partnership with JD, using a QR code on a2 Milk products to show logistics information at every stage of delivery. This is just one of the ways we are working together to give customers more peace of mind and confidence in their purchases.”

“The a2 Milk Company’s premium dairy products are an increasingly popular choice for Chinese parents across the country,” said Chris Cui, Head of JD Worldwide. “As China’s largest retailer, JD has unique capabilities to offer a2 Milk assistance in terms of marketing solutions, logistics and technology, helping a2 continue to grow their market share.”

With a reputation for safety and quality, products from Australia and New Zealand have consistently sold well on JD.com, with health supplements, maternal and baby products, wine, milk and cosmetics among the best-selling categories. In addition to a2 Milk, popular brands including Swisse, Blackmores, Devondale, Penfolds and Jacob’s Creek have also seen impressive growth in sales on the JD platform, with sales of Penfolds products increasing by more than 200% yoy during the first 30 minutes on June 18th.

Cats and Campers: how JD and Nestlé better slake the appetites of both through insight

Posted on by Rachel Liu

China’s largest retailer, JD.com is helping Nestlé win in the Chinese market through careful analysis of consumer insights and thoughtful product design, as demonstrated by a couple of recent cases.

JD recently took up the challenge of making Nestlé’s already high selling Nestlé Purina FancyFeast cat wet food packages even more popular. Analyzing the buying habits of FancyFeast consumers, JD found that some of the flavors in the variety pack were more popular than others. The joint team used these insights to create a new 8-can variety pack comprised of two cans of each of the four most popular flavors. When the product first launched, JD worked with the brand to identify a group of consumers on JD who would be likely to welcome the product based on a range of factors, and to prepare 10,000 trial boxes (2 cans per box) to include in their existing orders. The results were clear: during the 6.18 shopping holiday, sales of the new sets of cans were twice that of the old variety.

JD also leveraged information gathered from consumers’ demographic profiles to create the new FancyFeast product. By analyzing the profile of Nestlé Purina consumers, JD found that most consumers are highly educated, higher spending, and more likely to be members of JD’s loyalty program, JD Plus. JD also noticed a general trend of pet owners interested in acquiring higher quality products for their pets – for example, recent searches for “smart pet water fountain” have surged. JD concluded that Nestlé Purina consumers would be willing to spend more on premium pet food and recommended an upgrade of the old flavors. For example, the “tuna” flavor has been ungraded to a more premium “tuna with bonito flakes and chicken.”

JD concluded that Nestlé Purina consumers would be willing to spend more on premium pet food and recommended an upgrade of the old flavors

Consumer insights weren’t just limited to the animal world, as JD also helped Nestlé better tailor their wafer bar products to the Chinese market. Nestlé’s crispy wafer bars are one the brand’s signature items, and are a snack JD consumers often go online to buy in bulk. When analyzing consumer feedback, JD found that consumers preferred large packages of wafer bars for trips and family outings — but at the time, Nestlé’s wafer bar product portfolio didn’t offer an optimal solution to suit these types of occasions. At the same time, consumers indicated that they preferred smaller wafer bars in a variety of flavors to be able to share more easily. Based on this information, JD helped Nestlé designed new, larger packs containing more mini-sized wafer bars in a variety of flavors. To position the product to consumers as an ideal choice for outings, the package was designed in the shape of a backpack. JD and Nestlé’s thoughtful design paid off – from June 1-June 18, sales of the new product were 70% higher than the same period of the previous month.

The new initiatives are the latest in a long history of partnership between JD and Nestlé. Nestlé products have consistently performed well on JD.com, and JD is the biggest online seller of Nestlé products in China. Nescafé is the brand’s best-selling product on JD, and KitKat bars have also been a consistently popular choice of snack among JD’s affluent users.

“This is a clear demonstration of our Consumer-to-Manufacturer model’s power to help brands connect more deeply with Chinese consumers,” said Carol Fung, President of JD FMCG. “Nestlé is a long-time partner of ours, and together we keep innovating to meet and exceed consumer expectations.”

“The depth of insights JD provides to Nestlé in China is invaluable in helping us provide consumers exactly what they want,” said Rebecca Wang, Head of E-commerce, Nestlé GCR. “E-commerce in China provides a unique view into consumer desires, and JD is leading the way in converting these insights into tangible recommendations on product design, positioning and marketing.”

JD has increasingly looked to apply its consumer insights for the benefit of brands on its platform, as part of the company’s “C2M” (Consumer-to-Manufacturer) initiative. Other successful products to benefit from JD’s C2M model include diapers, alcohol and even sticky rice dumplings.

How JD.com uses Vitess to manage scaling databases for hyperscale

Posted on by Rachel Liu

The following case study by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation originally appeared here: https://www.cncf.io/jdcom-case-study/

Challenge

China’s largest retailer, JD.com serves more than 300 million active customers with its e-commerce business. “A few years ago, it became apparent that as our data became more extensive, our MySQL databases became larger, resulting in declining performance and higher operations and maintenance costs,” says JD Retail Chief Architect Haifeng Liu. “We needed a solution that would enable us to easily and quickly scale MySQL, facilitate operation and maintenance, and reduce hardware and labor costs.”

Solution

JD chose Vitess for scalable management of large-scale database services and the support of online expansion of complex transactional data in MySQL. “We now run MySQL databases in containerized environments with Kubernetes and use Vitess for scalable cluster management and handling large volumes of complex transactional data,” says Liu.

Impact

With Vitess, JD has seen improvements in the scalability and elasticity of the database clusters. Increased resource utilization and efficiency and the automation of operation and maintenance functions have also led to reductions in labor and resource costs.

China’s largest retailer and the world’s third-largest Internet company by revenue, JD.com serves more than 300 million active customers with its e-commerce business.

The company also owns China’s largest e-commerce logistics infrastructure, which covers an incredible 99% of the country’s population and has achieved delivery rates of more than 90% of orders delivered same- or next-day.

“A few years ago, it became apparent that as our data became more extensive, our MySQL databases became larger, resulting in declining performance and higher operations and maintenance costs,” says JD Retail Chief Architect Haifeng Liu, who leads the Technological Infrastructure Department responsible for driving innovation in containerized infrastructure and developing the hyperscale, containerized, Kubernetes-based platform that powers all facets of JD’s business. “We needed a solution that would enable us to easily and quickly scale MySQL, facilitate operation and maintenance, and reduce hardware and labor costs.”

The company previously used JProxy, a cobar-based database middleware system for MySQL database management. After a thorough evaluation process, Liu says, “we eventually chose Vitess since it was the most suitable solution to address the biggest challenge we were facing: scalable management of large-scale database services and the support of online expansion of complex transactional data in MySQL. We now run MySQL databases in containerized environments with Kubernetes and use Vitess for scalable cluster management and handling large volumes of complex transactional data.”

Being a very early adopter of Vitess—and with one of the largest and most complex deployments of the technology, to boot—came with some challenges. “The re-sharding process was initially manual, the performance was poor, and the orchestrator could fail in large clusters with more than 5,000 instances,” says Liu.

To make sure that Vitess would work at JD’s scale, Liu’s team made numerous improvements and changes, including bug fixes and new functionalities and features. They have also developed performance optimization and automated management tools for the company’s JDOS Kubernetes platform. Among them:

  • JTransfer, an online data synchronization and transmission tool that migrates data from JD’s traditional MySQL databases to the Vitess cluster in real time. All topology information in Vitess is stored in etcd.
  • BinLake, a MySQL collection tool for real-time collection of Binlog in Vitess and traditional MySQL database services, and publication of the collected Binlog to the Message Queue (JMQ) service. Integrated with Vitess, “BinLake provides intelligent and highly available binlog collection services in clusters,” says Liu. “If there is resharding or failover in Vitess, Binlake will automatically adjust the database instance of the binlog.”
  • Mole, a Vitess management system with a GUI console, which improves Vitess service management. “With Mole, we can easily create, reshard, monitor, and back up Vitess’s key spaces,” says Liu.

“Most of our improvements have been contributed back to the Vitess code base for other developers in the community to benefit from,” says Liu.

“We eventually chose Vitess since it was the most suitable solution to address the biggest challenge we were facing: scalable management of large-scale database services.” — Haifeng Liu, Chief Architect at JD Retail

With Vitess, JD has seen improvements in the scalability and elasticity of the database clusters. Increased resource utilization and efficiency and the automation of operation and maintenance functions have also led to reductions in labor and resource costs.

Additionally, “Vitess helped the team grow their technical knowledge and strength in the areas of scalable management and elastic database,” says Liu. “The fact that Vitess is a CNCF project means we can significantly benefit from working with a large number of developers and end users in the most active and fast-growing open source community. With CNCF’s endorsement, Vitess can gain increasing awareness, attract more end users and bring together developers to the project. This is very beneficial for Vitess and its end users, which is important to us.”

Liu and his team are excited about the future of Vitess. In addition to migrating its systems to the newly-released Vitess 3.0 (which Liu calls “a significant improvement”), they’re working on developing some common functions for the latest version and developing a more complete operations and maintenance monitoring system.

“The fact that Vitess is a CNCF project means we can significantly benefit from working with a large number of developers and end users in the most active and fast-growing open source community.”

— Haifeng Liu, Chief Architect at JD Retail

For other organizations considering Vitess, Liu offers this advice: “The most value can be derived from Vitess when it is used in concert with Kubernetes. Before using Vitess, it is imperative to perform more testing and research to determine if Vitess is the right solution for your business, and to better understand what adjustments you might have to make to integrate it with your existing systems.”

For JD, Kubernetes, Vitess, and other cloud native technologies have been a game-changer. “Modern service platforms need to be scalable and extremely efficient and agile,” says Liu. “Cloud native technology is well-suited to handle these ever-changing environments. It offers flexibility, efficiency, scalability, independence, continuous integration and delivery for software services, all of which further enhance the quality of software services and resource efficiency. Kubernetes has become the de facto standard and cloud native is a sure thing to bet on for the future.”

JD Rescues Chinese Millennials from Rejection when Gifting

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

Gift giving has been an important part of traditional Chinese culture for thousands of years. The act is believed to shorten the emotional distance between people, facilitate communication and consensus, and even create good business opportunities. The general expectation is that gifts should be given in-person on the spot, but as people are becoming more technologically-savvy, this process has become a bit awkward for some. China’s largest retailer, JD.com, is addressing this head-on with “JD Gift”(京东有礼), a mini-program embedded in Tencent’s WeChat app that makes gift giving easy and approachable.

Ordering a gift online to be sent to a recipient the traditional way is extremely convenient. However there is an often-overlooked, and likely unintended awkwardness attached to it. If you don’t know someone’s address in order to send the gift, you’ll have to ask for it. At that point, it is highly possible that the intended recipient will try to talk you out of sending the gift out of politeness. This is completely avoided with JD Gift.

All the gift-giver needs to do is select a gift from the vast selection available on the gift marketplace, and make the purchase, at which point the recipient will receive a message indicating them to input their shipping information. The gift is already paid for, so there is no need to worry about the recipient politely declining the gift.

JD Gift is particularly appealing to China’s younger generations.

JD Gift is particularly appealing to China’s younger generations. According to Statista, in 2018, there were around 673.5 million social media users in China. Around 30% of mobile internet time is spent on WeChat, and peak WeChat usage is by the 26-35 age group. As the vast majority of Chinese youth now socialize a great deal online, some often find it awkward to give gifts in person and enjoy the comfort of being able to do so virtually rather than face-to-face. According to a JD survey, 34% of users cited avoiding the awkwardness of either giving the gift in person and 28% of users cited the risk of the receiver rejecting the gift as reasons to send e-gift cards instead of physical gifts. Furthermore, they also appreciate the ability to immediately send a gift should a special occasion, such as a friend’s birthday, inadvertently slip their mind.

JD has been selling gift cards through its mini-program for several years, but only started quietly testing the option to purchase physical gifts in the last year.JD has been selling gift cards through its mini-program for several years, but only started quietly testing the option to purchase physical gifts in the last year. This is particularly timely given that Qixi Festival (also known as Double Seventh Festival), which is considered China’s “Valentine’s Day” falls on August 7th. Qixi festival celebrates the Chinese folk tale, “The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl”. As the story goes (and there are many versions of it), a cowherd and a weaver girl fell in love, but because their love was not allowed, they were banished to opposite sides of the heavenly river. Once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, a flock of magpies would form a bridge to reunite the lovers for one day. This is what is celebrated during Qixi, and today there is a gift giving expectation for young couples around the celebration each year.

“In today’s fast-paced world, it’s important to take the time to show our loved ones that we’re always thinking about them,” said Xiaohua Luo, Head of JD Gift Card. “We understand that our customers are busy, and want to make it as easy as possible to send gifts to their loved ones. JD Gift shows how technology innovation can help make the long important tradition of gift-giving convenient and hassle-free.”

JD AI Makes Customer Service Simple

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

For China Unicom customers in Sichuan, a large province in Southwest China, customer service will become much smarter and more efficient. Through a partnership with JD.com, China’s largest retailer, China Unicom Sichuan will integrate artificial intelligence into its customer service apparatus.

The two parties will collaborate in implementing AI in China Unicom’s voice-based customer service. Customers who call the customer service hotline can be greeted by a natural-sounding voice who will direct them where to go, and seamlessly transfer them to human customer service as necessary. The two parties will also integrate AI into China Unicom’s public WeChat account to handle any inquiries that come through from customers via text. In addition, JD will help China Unicom Sichuan build an AI-based precision marketing solution to ensure that marketing activities reach the right audiences. Importantly, the partnership between JD and China Unicom Sichuan will help to significantly reduce bottlenecks in customer service, while further enhancing the overall service level provided by China Unicom Sichuan to customers.

In addition to telecoms, JD has extended its AI powered customer service to other industries, completely changing the way things are done. In July, JD and West China Second University Hospital, the leading hospital in Southwest China, launched AI-powered medical care customer service via the hospital’s WeChat public account. Patients can get comprehensive and accurate responses to frequent and repetitive queries, such as how to get a number to line up, which department of the hospital to go to, the doctor’s schedule, and more, as well as be referred to human customer service if their inquiry can’t be handled by AI. This helps relieve a huge burden from the hospital. Launched in 2014, the hospital’s official WeChat account receives an average of 40,000 daily visits. With AI customer service, the hospital can drastically improve its response rate, accuracy level and overall customer satisfaction level. Currently 95% of the inquiries received can be answered by AI at a 90% accuracy rate, and it continues to improve.

The technology for the customer service robot is based on JD.com’s smart customer service chatbot. JD receives millions of inquiries every day, and the chatbot was originally developed to address the high volume of inquiries without sacrificing the customer experience. Using deep learning and transfer learning technologies, JD’s customer service chatbot is able to detect even the subtlest of human emotions in real-time and provide appropriate responses, making for a natural and efficient interaction. During JD’s June 18 anniversary sales event (“6.18”), its customer service robot fielded more than 32 million inquiries, of which 90% were solved independently.

JD’s customer service chatbot is able to detect even the subtlest of human emotions in real-time and provide appropriate responses,

“AI is not just a technology. It’s a solution to some of the most pressing challenges faced by many industries,” said Bowen Zhou, President of JD AI. “If you look at the telecom,s industry as just one example, there is a shortage in customer service resources. In the medical industry, there are many talented medical professionals, but there is still a shortage of talent. Changing how we visit the hospital by applying AI throughout the medical industry, is just one way AI can transform our lives.”

“Our mission is to provide top notch customer service,” said Feng Cao, Deputy General Manager at China Unicom Sichuan. With JD AI, we are raising the bar for customer experience, and integrating technology more deeply into everything we do.”