A customer is usually the company; contacts are the people inside it. One customer can have
several contacts.
Why this matters for your inbox
Conversations attach to a person, and a person’s owner drives sticky assignment — their messages keep returning to the same agent across every channel. See How assignment works. So an unowned customer is not just untidy record-keeping: their conversations go back into the general rotation each time, and they get a different agent on every contact.Working with them
Both pages offer table, card and list views with filters and sorting. From a record you can see its timeline, log an activity, add phone numbers and social profiles, schedule a meeting, set follow-ups and apply tags. Customer records also have call, SMS and email actions.Tags
Tags are shared across contacts, customers and leads — one vocabulary, applied wherever it is useful, and filterable everywhere. They work best when the list is short and agreed. Ten meaningful tags used consistently beat sixty invented ad hoc, which is what happens when everyone adds their own.Import and export
Both support CSV import and CSV/Excel export.1
Download the template first
So the columns match. Guessing them is the usual cause of a failed import.
2
Include country codes on phone numbers
A number without one will not match an incoming WhatsApp conversation to this record —
the customer arrives as a stranger with no history.
3
Import, then set owners
Imported records without an owner do not benefit from sticky assignment.