Hi Alan,
Unfortunately many terms (like “users” and “customers”) are overloaded and depend on context.
From an application point of view, your end users/customers should not not have direct access to underlying infrastructure like database deployments. Irrespective of whether you are using Atlas, your end users/customers should not translate 1:1 to database users. Your applications validate and manage end user requests to data; the only direct database users should be your applications and your DBAs.
The audience for Atlas documentation is your development and admin team, not your customers. From Atlas’ point of view, your admins and applications are Atlas Users and Database Users. Any reference to “customer” in the Atlas documentation is referring to you, as an Atlas customer.
Regards,
Stennie