How to merge two customer records
In Contact by Zaweba, Merge records folds a duplicate customer into the right record, and the merge is listed in Recent actions with an Undo.
To merge two customer records in Contact by Zaweba, use Merge records, which folds one record into the other so you are left with a single record and a single conversation. The merge appears in Recent actions with its own Undo, so if you merge the wrong pair you can put them back.
How duplicates happen
Duplicate records are common and nobody's fault. A customer enquires through your website form and later writes from their work address. Two people at the same firm write in before you realise they are colleagues. Or an email gets filed as a New enquiry when it really belonged to someone you already had.
The sign is usually the same: you open a customer and the conversation seems to start halfway through, because the beginning is sitting on the other record.
Before you merge
Decide which record should survive. Usually that is the older one, or the one already converted to a customer, so it keeps its place in your customer folders. The other one is the one you merge in.
Have a quick look at both. Check they really are the same customer and not two separate people or departments who happen to share a company name. Two genuinely separate customers at a big organisation are often better left as two records, each with its own contacts.
Doing the merge
Use Merge records to fold the duplicate into the record you are keeping. What you end up with is one record and one conversation, so you can read the whole history in order.
Afterwards, open the surviving record and look through the conversation. The timeline shows their emails on the left and yours on the right with events in between, which makes it easy to see that everything has arrived.
If you merged the wrong pair
Open Recent actions. Every change to your data is listed there in plain words, each with its own Undo. Find the merge and undo it. Undo first checks that everything the action changed is still as it left it, so undoing doesn't trample anything you have done since. Entries are kept for 30 days, up to 500.
Tidying up after a merge
Look at the record's Matching panel. It lists the addresses and any domain that bring mail in. After a merge, check that the addresses from both records are listed, so future mail from either goes to the single record, and remove anything that doesn't belong.
Check the Threads strip. Emails about the same matter from the two records may now sit as separate threads. Threads can be merged too, and renamed, so a quote that was split across both records reads as one story again.
Bring tags, stars and notes up to date. If the two records were tagged differently, make sure the surviving one carries what is still true.
Duplicate people as well as records
Merge records deals with the customer. The Address Book deals with the people. Its Duplicates filter finds anyone listed more than once, and its merge combines them. It is worth running after a record merge, and after importing contacts from a CSV or vCard file, so that when you pick a name in compose you get the person you meant.
Use Link to an existing record in the Inbox when a new sender belongs to someone you already have, rather than making a New enquiry. And switch on domain matching for companies whose staff all write to you, so new colleagues join the existing record automatically.
