What is a Contact?

In one sentence

A Contact is one person you talk to, identified by their phone number, along with everything you know about them — name, tags, custom details, and history.

Why contacts matter

The WhatsApp app has no real address book for business. MsgBuddy’s Contacts give you a proper customer database: search it, tag it, group it, and target campaigns at it. Every conversation in your Inbox is attached to a contact, so their history is always one click away.

The phone number is the identity

Each contact is keyed on their phone number, stored in the international E.164 format — that’s a +, the country code, then the number, with no spaces or dashes.

Because the phone number is the identity, MsgBuddy automatically avoids duplicates: if a message arrives from a number you already have, it attaches to the existing contact rather than creating a new one. This is called upsert-by-phone.

What a contact holds

• Tags — quick labels like VIP or Wholesale.
• Custom fields — structured details you define, like City or Plan.
• Lifecycle stage — where they are in your funnel (Lead → Customer → …).
• Notes — freeform reminders your team can read.
• History — every conversation and message.
• Opt-out / block — whether they’ve asked to stop hearing from you (respected everywhere).
• Tasks — follow-ups linked to this person.

How this connects to everything else

• The Inbox shows conversations, each tied to a contact.
• Segments are saved filters over contacts, used as Campaign audiences.
• Opt-out status blocks sends automatically, keeping you compliant.

A little organisation early pays off hugely later. Even just tagging customers by city or interest now means you can send a relevant campaign later — which keeps your quality rating green and your unsubscribes low.

Next: add and import contacts →.