> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.automatebusiness.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Contacts

> Manage individual customer profiles with automatic deduplication and upsert capabilities.

Contacts represent individual people—customers, leads, or partners—associated with your workspace. Contact records store communication channels (phone numbers, email addresses), organizational metadata, and custom field values.

![CRM contact records directory showing contact details, phone numbers, and segmentation tags](https://mintcdn.com/automatebusiness/OFwTsewf58VxBW78/images/automate-crm/crm-contact-record.png?fit=max\&auto=format\&n=OFwTsewf58VxBW78\&q=85\&s=cd73c6ead82806055b8b85631f5c6e3b)

## Key capabilities

* **Automatic deduplication and upserts**: When creating a contact via `POST /contacts`, the CRM automatically checks for existing records with matching phone numbers or emails in your workspace. If a match is found, the system performs an upsert by updating the existing profile instead of creating a duplicate.
* **Phone number normalization**: Contact phone numbers are stored with country codes (such as `+1`, `+44`, or `+91`) and national numbers for reliable omnichannel lookup.
* **Tags**: Apply tags (such as `vip`, `partner`, or `decision-maker`) to segment contacts for campaigns and filtering.
* **Custom fields**: Attach industry-specific or company-specific properties defined in your workspace metadata.

## Contact lifecycle

1. **Creation/Upsert**: Ingest contacts from webhooks, website sign-ups, or chat interactions.
2. **Detail retrieval**: Inspect complete contact profiles by unique ID.
3. **Continuous enrichment**: Update tags and custom fields as you learn more about customer needs.

## Related API operations

* [List contacts](https://docs.automatebusiness.com/automate-crm/api-reference/contacts/list-contacts.md): Search and paginate contacts.
* [Get contact](https://docs.automatebusiness.com/automate-crm/api-reference/contacts/get-contact.md): Retrieve an individual contact record by ID.
* [Create or upsert contact](https://docs.automatebusiness.com/automate-crm/api-reference/contacts/create-contact.md): Add or update contacts with duplicate resolution.
* [Update contact](https://docs.automatebusiness.com/automate-crm/api-reference/contacts/update-contact.md): Modify contact properties and custom fields.
* [Contact follow-ups](https://docs.automatebusiness.com/automate-crm/api-reference/follow-ups/list-contact-followups.md): Schedule reminder calls or meetings.


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