How it works
The platform behind the pod.
If you've ever tried to keep product information consistent across your website, your retailer pages, your label and a compliance file, you'll recognise the problem TalkPod is built for. Your product data already lives somewhere, and you don't want to maintain it in a second place. So TalkPod doesn't ask you to. We read your data from where it already sits, check it against the regulations that apply to your category, and serve it as a conversational pod for your customers, as a Digital Product Passport for regulators, and as the richer content sitting behind the QR code on your packaging, all from a single shared data layer. The four stages on this page describe how that happens, and why it gets sharper the longer you run it.
The loop
A loop, not a pipeline.
The default shape for a product data tool is a one-way pipeline: source goes in, surface comes out, and nothing flows back. TalkPod was built the other way around. Every question a customer asks the pod tells you something about what your catalogue should say next, and that feedback flows back into the source.
Your product data stays where it is.
Your product information lives in a PIM, an ecommerce platform, a working spreadsheet, or all three at once. TalkPod reads from those systems directly. Nothing migrates and nothing has to be re-keyed, so the team that owns the data on your side carries on owning it. When you update a product spec on a Monday, the pod answering a customer on the Tuesday is already working from the new copy.
- Connects to
- PIM systems, ecommerce platforms, product feeds, CSV uploads, or a per-tenant API.
- Stays in sync
- When the source changes, every working surface picks it up.
You'll know what's missing before an audit does.
Every product TalkPod reads is checked against the Digital Product Passport schema for its category, whether that's the textiles schema for clothing and home textiles, the machinery schema for power tools, or the construction products schema for paints, adhesives and the wider Built Environment catalogue. We add more schemas as the EU publishes them. Each record gets a clear completeness score and a list of the fields that still need to be filled. By the time your category's deadline arrives, you've had time to do the work with intent, rather than under pressure.
→ Want a clean first read on where your catalogue sits? We'll run a free DPP review on your top fifty products and tell you exactly what's missing. Email hello@talkpod.ai.
- Schemas live
- textiles under the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, machinery under the Machinery Regulation, construction products under the new Construction Products Regulation.
- Per product
- completeness score, the list of missing required fields, and a full field-level change history.
One record, three places it shows up.
A buyer on your site asks what frost rating the pressure washer is built for. The pod answers from your own product data in seconds. The same product also has a public passport at a stable URL: scan the QR on the box and the customer, the auditor or the retailer reaches the schema-validated record. And the same QR can carry the richer content the brand wants behind it: ingredients, origin, allergens, instructions, warranty, care guidance. All three surfaces draw from one place, so a Tuesday update changes what your customer hears, what your auditor can verify, and what your packaging is offering, at the same moment.
- Customer side
- embeddable pod widget on any product page, multi-turn and multi-language, willing to say it doesn't know rather than fabricate.
- Compliance side
- public passport at /passport/<gtin>, also resolvable under the GS1 Digital Link convention at /01/<gtin>.
- Packaging side
- the same QR can publish richer content behind it: ingredients, origin, allergens, usage instructions, warranty, care guidance. Your resolver decides what each scan returns.
- More channels
- WhatsApp is live today. Voice and in-store kiosk are on the roadmap, on the same data layer.
Every question your customer asks is data you didn't have.
Customers ask questions in patterns. Five buyers a week want to know whether something is dishwasher safe. Another twelve want to know if it ships to Northern Ireland. The pod logs each one, and where the data isn't quite there to answer well, that points at a real gap in the catalogue rather than a problem with the model. Brand teams see the questions, the answers and the gaps in the dashboard, and pilot tenants get a weekly buyer-question audit on top so the picture stays honest week to week.
- Per pilot
- Weekly buyer-question audit against the live pod, scored against what a real customer would expect to find.
- Per catalogue
- Field-level change history. Every passport edit is attributable, dated, and reversible.
Why the loop matters
The work you do today shows up in the catalogue tomorrow.
TalkPod isn't a chatbot bolted onto your website, a passport portal that duplicates your data, or another job on the packaging team's roadmap. It's a platform built around one record, and the longer it runs, the sharper that record gets. If you've got a catalogue and a deadline, we'd like to hear about it.