At a glance
- Company
- Temple & WebsterOnline retailer of furniture and homewares
- Size
- Medium (50–249 employees) The company’s annual report says it employed 208 team members across Australia at 30 June 2026.
- Industry
- E-commerce and retail
- Where and when
- Australia. July 2022 – June 2026.
- Who produced the figures
- The company itselfThe figures are the company’s own, from its annual reports and results filed with the Australian Securities Exchange. Its financial year runs from July to June. Amounts are in Australian dollars.
What they did
Temple & Webster sells furniture and homewares online. It lists more than 170,000 products and had revenue of $665 million in the year to June 2026. It has its own AI team.
Customer care came first. By the year to June 2025, the company reported that AI and other technology handled 80% of customer contacts before and after a sale, in whole or in part. In the following year it moved to a new AI chat platform, redesigned how support requests flow, and automated the sending of replacement parts.
Then the shop itself. In the year to June 2026 it tested AI-powered search on its site, added an AI-driven row of matching products, and brought in an AI tool that estimates the shipping cost shown at checkout.
Then buying. Its buyers now run AI reviews of the product range to find gaps, and use AI tools to create product images.
And the organization around it. In the same year the company:
- set up a central group, which it calls an AI Centre of Excellence, to oversee AI use and its rules across the company;
- named “AI Champions” in every department to share what they learn;
- made all AI tools subject to central approval;
- ran training and live demonstrations, and published playbooks on an internal AI hub.
The numbers
- 80% of customer contacts before and after a sale were handled partly or fully by AI and technology in the year to June 2025.
- Customer care costs down by over 60% as a share of revenue between 2023 and 2025.
- Over $2 million a year saved by the new chat platform, the redesigned support flows and the automated parts dispatch, while customer satisfaction scores improved.
- Failed searches down by about 75% in the test of AI-powered site search.
- Close to 90% agreement between the gaps that AI range reviews found and the gaps found by hand.
- Fixed costs fell from 10.6% to 10.1% of revenue in a year. The company puts this mainly down to AI and automation across the business.
What the case shows
- A company of 200 can do this. It started with the process that every online shop has and that costs money every day: answering customers.
- The saving came from changing the process too. The company names the redesigned support flows alongside the chat platform.
- Rules followed use. Central approval of tools, department contacts and training came once AI was in several parts of the business.
- It checked the AI against people before relying on it. The range reviews were compared with manual ones.
- The company names the risk itself. Its annual report lists AI publishing wrong or unsuitable content “without adequate human oversight” as a risk to its reputation, and says it manages this with content reviews and rules for AI use.
What this says about the practices
Practices the company applied
- Start with one costly process, not a company-wide rollout The first figures the company reported were for one process: answering customers before and after a sale. Do first · Effort: medium (weeks, a few people)
- Redesign the workflow instead of adding a tool to it The 2026 saving came from a new AI chat platform together with “redesigned support flows” and automatic dispatch of replacement parts. Do next · Effort: high (months, several teams)
- Train staff on the tools you actually chose “All AI tooling is now centrally approved and usage is facilitated through training and live demonstration sessions.” Do first · Effort: medium (weeks, a few people)
- Measure time saved per task against a baseline Customer care cost is reported as a share of revenue against the 2023 level. AI reviews of the product range were compared with reviews done by hand. Do first · Effort: low (days, one person)
Sources
- Temple & Webster Group (29 September 2026). Annual Report 2026. Filed with the Australian Securities Exchange. announcements.asx.com.au
- Temple & Webster Group (14 August 2025). Appendix 4E and annual report for the year to 30 June 2025. Filed with the Australian Securities Exchange. announcements.asx.com.au