> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://plain-mattvagni-patch-1.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Customer cards

> Live context straight from your own systems when helping customers.

Customer cards are a powerful feature in Plain that allows you to show information from your own systems while looking at a customer or thread in Plain. This ensures that you always have important context at your fingertips when helping customers, without having to jump through different tabs and admin tools.

<Frame>![Customer cards within Plain](https://mintlify.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/plain-mattvagni-patch-1/public/images/customer-cards-introduction.png)</Frame>

Customer cards are:

* Pulled from your backend, so you do not have to sync your customer data to Plain.
* Short-lived, so no data is permanently stored in Plain beyond the time frame you set.
* Defined using a simple JSON schema, so you don't have to worry about styling them.
* Automatically reloaded if a user is viewing a customer and the data expires.

[**Jump to documentation →**](/api-reference/customer-cards)