Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud™ provides out-of-the-box integrations with leading e-commerce platforms, including Shopify and BigCommerce, as well as support for custom integrations with any retail system of record. These integrations connect your customer, order, and product data directly to Talkdesk, enabling capabilities across the Retail Agent Workspace, IVR flows, Talkdesk Autopilot™ for AI-powered self-service, and more.
This article explains which platforms are supported, how your data is connected, and what your integration enables.
Supported Platforms
Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud supports three integration paths:
- Shopify : For retailers running one or more Shopify stores. Uses a Shopify Custom App and real-time webhooks to keep data current. Supports single-store and multi-store configurations.
- BigCommerce: For retailers on BigCommerce. Connects via the BigCommerce REST API and real-time webhooks to keep data current. Supports single store and multi-store configurations.
- Custom Integration: For retailers using a proprietary order management system or a platform not natively supported. Requires building an adapter to the Talkdesk ERC Standard API.
What Each Integration Can Do
The table below shows which capabilities are available for each platform. Agents and automated flows can use these capabilities directly from the Retail Workspace or Autopilot — without switching to your e-commerce platform.
| Capability | What it does | Shopify | Big Commerce | Custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search Customer by phone or email | Identify a customer on an external platform using their phone number or email. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Search Customer by ID | Look up a customer's full profile using their unique ID. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Search Customer Orders | View all orders placed by a customer. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Get Order Details | Retrieve full details of a specific order — including status, shipping address, pricing summary, and payment information | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Get Order Line Items | See the individual products within a specific order. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Get Most Recent Order | Retrieve the customer's latest order instantly. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Search All Orders | View all orders in the account (not limited to a single customer). | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Get Live Cart | See what's currently in a customer's active shopping cart. | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cancel Order | Cancel an entire order on the customer's behalf. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cancel Items from an Order | Remove specific items from an existing order. | – | ✓ | – |
| Change Shipping Address | Update the delivery address for an existing order. | ✓ | ✓ | – |
| Search Products | Look up product details from the retailer's catalog. | ✓ | ✓ | – |
| Customer shipment slots | Read available shipment slots for a customer or specific ID. | – | – | ✓ |
| Check Customer Technician Visit | See scheduled technician visit details for a customer or specific visit ID. | – | – | ✓ |
| Get Technician Visit Slot | Read available technician visit slots for a customer or specific visit ID. | – | – | ✓ |
| Schedule a Technician Visit | Schedule a technician visit for a customer. | – | – | ✓ |
| Create a Return | Initiate a return for items in an existing order. | ✓ | – | – |
| Return Reasons | Retrieve the list of available return reasons. | ✓ | – | – |
| Return Calculation | Calculate the value of a return, including order details, return items, and any exchange items. | ✓ | – | – |
| Cancel Return | Cancel a return that has been submitted. | ✓ | – | – |
✓ = Available
– = Not available for this platform
| Important: For the Retail Workspace and Talkdesk Autopilot™ to work correctly, the necessary capabilities for your integration must be in place. Your Professional Services team will confirm the required setup during onboarding. |
For the underlying API layer, refer to the Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud API documentation.
Historical Data Sync
A new integration only captures what happens from go-live onwards. Historical data sync bridges that gap — loading your existing orders, products, and customer records into Talkdesk so that agents and AI Agents can see the full customer history, not just recent interactions.
Historical Data Sync for Shopify and BigCommerce
Historical sync is available for both Shopify and BigCommerce. The process runs in the background and does not require any downtime or changes to your store.
- Shopify: Talkdesk uses Shopify’s Bulk GraphQL API to retrieve your historical data asynchronously. This approach handles millions of records without impacting your store’s operations and typically completes within one to two hours for datasets of up to one million orders.
- BigCommerce: Talkdesk retrieves your historical data by calling the BigCommerce REST API sequentially. Sync speed depends on your BigCommerce plan tier — larger datasets on Standard or Plus plans can take several days to complete. Enterprise plans are significantly faster.
Note: For BigCommerce customers on Standard or Plus plans, we recommend discussing expected sync timelines with your Professional Services team before go-live to plan accordingly.
What Gets Synced
The following data types can be synced from your e-commerce platform into Talkdesk:
- Orders — including line items, refunds, and returns.
- Products — your full product catalog.
- Customers — customer profiles and contact details.
How to Trigger a Sync
Historical data sync is triggered via the Talkdesk ERC API. Sync jobs run independently per resource type. You can run separate jobs for Orders, Products, and Customers. Only one job per store can run at a time — attempting to start a second job while one is in progress will return an error.
| Note: Historical data sync is currently configured and triggered by the Talkdesk Professional Services team during onboarding. For more information, contact your Customer Success Manager or refer to the Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud API documentation. |
Historical Data Sync for Custom Integration
For Custom integration customers, historical customer data is synchronized using the Talkdesk ERC Standard API — specifically the External Customers API endpoint. Historical data is loaded by calling the External Customers API to populate customer records in Talkdesk before go-live.
Contact Sync
Contact sync determines how Talkdesk identifies and stores the customer behind each interaction. There are two approaches to contact sync: Pre-Sync and Real-Time Lookup. This decision is made during onboarding and shapes your data architecture.
Pre-Sync (recommended)
Your customer records are loaded into Talkdesk Contacts in bulk during onboarding. After that, any customer creation or update in your platform automatically updates the corresponding record in Talkdesk via real-time webhooks.
How it works:
- At onboarding, Talkdesk runs a historical sync to load your customers’ contact data.
- As customers are created or updated in your platform, Talkdesk receives a webhook and updates the record automatically.
- Agents see customer data instantly at the start of every call — no lookup delay, no dependency on your platform being available at that moment.
Best for:
- Enterprise retailers and high-volume stores.
- Stores using Talkdesk Autopilot™ for self-service flows.
- Multi-brand or multi-store configurations.
- Any store that needs proactive outreach or full CX Analytics reporting.
Real-Time Lookup
Instead of pre-loading your database, Talkdesk identifies each customer at the moment an interaction begins. Using the caller's phone number or email address, Talkdesk queries your platform live and links the interaction to the correct contact record.
How it works:
- At the start of a call or digital interaction, Talkdesk captures the customer's phone number or email.
- Talkdesk queries your system of record in real time and retrieves the matching customer profile.
- The customer is identified and their data is made available to agents and automated flows.
Best for:
- Smaller stores or retailers running a pilot.
- Stores that prioritise always-current data and want a simpler setup.
- Custom integrations where a full database sync is not feasible.
How Real-Time Lookup Is Used:
- Workspace – Search Customer: In the Retail Agent Workspace, agents can use the Search Customer feature to look up a customer by phone number or email during an active interaction. This triggers a real-time query to your commerce platform and surfaces the matching customer profile directly in the Workspace.
- Digital Interactions – Studio Flows: In automated Studio flows, Real-Time Lookup is used as the first step of an identity resolution sequence. A flow calls the External Customers API to identify the customer.
| Contact record update — linking the active interaction to the correct customer identity — is performed separately by the Switch Contact Studio component when used in automated flows. For Studio setup instructions, refer to the Switch Contact component reference in Talkdesk Studio documentation. |
Comparing the Two Approaches
| Pre-Sync | Real-Time Lookup | |
|---|---|---|
| Data freshness | Near real-time (updates via webhook) | Always current — fetched live at call time |
| Setup complexity | Low — historical sync required at onboarding | Lower — no historical sync needed |
| Call-time latency | None — data already in Talkdesk | Small — depends on your platform’s API speed |
| Autopilot self-service | Supported | Requires customer ID to be known upfront |
| Proactive outreach | Supported | Not supported |
| Multi-store support | Supported | Supported |
| Recommended for | Enterprise, multi-brand, Autopilot users | Smaller stores, pilots |
| Note: Real-Time Lookup does not create a persistent contact record in Talkdesk. Proactive outreach and contact-level reporting are not available with this approach. If you need those capabilities, choose Pre-Sync. |
Multi-Store and Multi-Brand Support
A single Talkdesk account can connect to multiple stores — whether on Shopify, BigCommerce, or a Custom integration — for example, a retailer operating several distinct brands all managed under one account.
How it works:
- Each store is configured independently, with its own connection and settings.
- Customer records from each store are kept separate, preventing duplicate contacts even when the same customer shops across multiple brands.
- Agents see the correct brand-specific order history for each customer automatically.
| Note: Multi-store configuration requires the Pre-Sync contact sync approach and is set up during onboarding with the Talkdesk Professional Services team. |
Getting started
E-commerce integrations are available for all Talkdesk Retail Experience Cloud customers. Setup is handled during onboarding with the Talkdesk Professional Services team.
To get started or to discuss which integration path and contact sync approach is right for your store, reach out to yout Talkdesk contact.
For more information about the API layer, please check out our public documentation.