# Customers A customer in Seam represents one of your end customers — for example, a hotel operator, property manager, gym owner, or office admin. Customers link the systems and devices they control (via Seam Connect) to your application. Seam gives you a way to tag each customer with your own identifier through the `customer_key`. This makes it easy to keep Seam’s records aligned with your own database. *** ### What is `customer_key`? `customer_key` is your unique identifier for a customer. You assign it when creating resources that belong to that customer. Seam then copies the same key to related resources, so you always have a reliable way to look them up. *** #### Key uses: * Connect Webviews: Tag a Webview with `customer_key`. When the customer connects their account, the resulting Connected Account inherits that key. * Customer Portals: Initialize a portal with `customer_key` so the portal shows only the devices, spaces, and accounts for that customer. * Lookups: Use `customer_key` to fetch all Connected Accounts, devices, or systems associated with a specific customer. *** ### Next step: set up a Customer Portal Once you’ve defined a customer with `customer_key`, you can set up a Customer Portal to give them self-service access to their systems and devices. In the next section, we’ll walk through how to configure a Customer Portal in the Console and initialize it with your `customer_key`. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.seam.co/latest/capability-guides/customer-portals/customers.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.