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Documentation

Customers

customers.find_by_contact

Find a customer by exact phone number or email address
Read-onlyRead budget

REST

Shipping
POST /api/v1/customers/find_by_contact

MCP tool

Live
customers.find_by_contact

Exposed on: REST API · Shop MCP server · Claude connector · Dash (in-app copilot) · Zapier. Part of the Customers domain.

Operating contract

The lookup to run BEFORE customers.create, so a second record is not opened for somebody the shop already has. A split customer splits their money and their message history, and merging them back is a person's job.

Exact match, not a search: the phone is normalised the way every write path normalises it, so '+1 (403) 555-0134' finds the row stored as '+14035550134'. Use customers.list with q when you only have part of a name or number.

Pass phone, email, or both — at least one is required. When both are given the phone is tried first, because a shop's texting history hangs off it.

found is null when nobody matches, which is a normal answer and not an error. When it is set, found.id is the customer_id every other capability takes.

Who may call it

Permission
customers.accessThe caller must hold Customers at the ACT level. A read-only dashboard grant on the same section is refused.
Plan
Every planNo plan gate. Available on every Service VIN plan.
Retries
naturalNaturally idempotent — running it twice leaves the same world as running it once. A retrying integration needs no key.
Rate class
readCounted against the read budget — the widest of the four.

Input

FieldTypeDescription
phonestringmax 40 chars

A phone number in any format. Normalised before matching.

emailstringmax 200 chars

An email address. Matched case-insensitively.

Output

FieldTypeDescription
foundobject | null

found.idstring

found.namestring

found.emailstring | null

found.phonestring | null

found.citystring | null

found.regionstring | null

found.postal_codestring | null

found.tagsstring[]

found.is_vipboolean

found.created_atstring

matched_onstring | null

One of: phone, email

Examples

Built from this capability's own schema — required fields and the ones carrying a default, and nothing invented. Paste one and it validates.

curl
export SERVICEVIN_API_KEY=svk_live_…

curl -X POST https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/customers/find_by_contact \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICEVIN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{}'

TypeScript (fetch)
const res = await fetch("https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/customers/find_by_contact", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SERVICEVIN_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({}),
});

// Success and failure are both envelopes. Switch on error.code, never
// on error.message — the codes are stable, the messages are for people.
const payload = await res.json();
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(payload.error.code);
const data = payload.data;

Python (requests)
import os, requests

res = requests.post(
    "https://www.servicevin.com/api/v1/customers/find_by_contact",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SERVICEVIN_API_KEY']}"},
    json={},
    timeout=30,
)
payload = res.json()
if not res.ok:
    raise RuntimeError(payload["error"]["code"])
data = payload["data"]

MCP tools/call — https://www.servicevin.com/api/mcp
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "customers.find_by_contact",
    "arguments": {}
  }
}

Refusals

The four gates run in this order on every surface, and the order is not arbitrary — see Authentication.

StatusCodeWhen
404not_foundThe id is unknown, or the feature is not enabled for this account. Deliberately the same answer for both.
403forbiddenThis login does not hold customers.access.
422validation_errorAn argument was wrong. The message names the field.
429rate_limitedToo many read calls. Back off and retry.
500internal_errorSomething failed on our side. Nothing was changed.