Customer contacts & identity

A customer on Sellerlane is not a single email address. Each customer holds a set of contacts — emails and phone numbers — and any one of them can be used to reach the customer, sign in, or match a new order back to the right profile. This page explains the multi-contact model, what verification means, and how sign-in works across contacts.

Note

The rules on this page are the customer-identity rules (CU-7 through CU-9) from the checkout and customer business rules, written for day-to-day use.

Contacts, primary contacts, and verification

Open any customer and you will see a Contacts section listing every email and phone number attached to that profile. Each contact carries two independent flags.

• Verified — the customer has proved they control this contact, by entering the one-time code (OTP) sent to it. A verified contact is an ownership claim.
• Primary — the default contact of its type. A customer has at most one primary email and one primary phone. Transactional messages (order updates, delivery links) prefer the primary contact of the required type.

A profile can hold several unverified contacts, but only one customer per store can hold a given verified email, and one per store a given verified phone. Verification is what settles ownership: until a contact is verified, the same address or number may sit unverified on more than one profile.

Tip

“Primary” is about which contact we send to first. “Verified” is about who owns the contact. They are separate — a brand-new profile can have a primary email that is not yet verified (for example, an address typed at guest checkout).

Verify to own

Because a contact only becomes exclusive once verified, verification is the act that claims a contact for one customer.

1. A contact is added — typed at checkout, entered by the shopper in their account, or added by you in the admin. It starts unverified.

2. The shopper (or you, on their behalf) triggers verification. A one-time code is sent to that email or phone.

3. Entering the correct code marks the contact verified and stamps the time. From that moment, no other customer in the store can hold the same verified email or phone.

This is why a contact that a guest types at checkout is stored unverified — typing an address is not proof of ownership. It becomes the customer’s own only once a code sent to it is entered. This guards against one shopper claiming another shopper’s email simply by typing it.

Sign in with any verified contact

Sign-in is passwordless and keyed to contacts, not to a single login field.

• A customer can sign in with any verified contact — any verified email or any verified phone on the profile. They request a one-time code, it goes to that contact, and entering it signs them in.
• An unverified contact cannot be used to sign in. It can still receive an order’s delivery link or a receipt, but it is not a login credential until it is verified.
• A customer with no verified contact (for example, a walk-in captured at the register with only a typed, unconfirmed phone) cannot sign in at all until one contact is verified. See walk-in customers.

Note

A store setting can restrict which contact types shoppers may use to acquire a new login (email, phone, or both). That governs new sign-ups and what checkout asks for. A customer who already holds a verified contact of a now-restricted type keeps the ability to sign in with it — restricting a login channel never strands an account that already relies on it.

How new orders find the right customer

When an order carries a contact, Sellerlane attaches it to a customer rather than minting a duplicate. It looks, in order, for:

1. A contact verified during this checkout — a phone confirmed by OTP, or a signed-in session. This is the strongest signal and wins.

2. An exact email match on an existing profile.

3. An exact phone match on an existing profile.

Email outranks phone because email is the default contact and primary identity key. A second contact the guest typed is written onto the matched profile only when that second contact was verified in the same checkout, or the matched profile had no verified contacts at all — and it is always stored unverified. This keeps a stranger from injecting their own phone into your customer’s profile by typing that customer’s email at guest checkout.

If the entered email and phone point at two different existing customers, Sellerlane does not merge them automatically. It attaches to one (following the store’s contact-method priority), leaves the other contact where it is, and records a possible-duplicate signal on both profiles so you can review and merge them deliberately.

What sends where

Transactional notifications (order confirmations, shipping updates, delivery links) go to the primary contact of the type the message needs, falling back to any verified contact of that type, and finally to any contact of that type. Marketing messages are a separate system governed by per-contact consent — see customers & segments.

Merging duplicates

Two profiles for the same person? See customer merge.

Buyer-facing accounts

How shoppers sign in and manage their own contacts: customer accounts.