If you discover that you’ve added duplicate versions of leads or contacts, you can easily merge the two (or more), records into one. Specifically, you can merge one or more contacts with a contact, or one or more leads with a lead.
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Best practices for merging leads or contacts
While you can merge multiple records in Leads or Contacts, you cannot merge leads with contacts. However you can convert a lead into a contact, (but the not the other way round).
Before you merge two or more records together, check the following:
- The information is correct
- There are no typos
- The information is consistent, (for example, the names and phone numbers match)
If the information was inconsistent (for example the records had two different phone numbers), then Sell automatically creates additional custom fields to retain the non-identical information.
To clean up the additional fields
- In Sell, click the Settings icon (
), then go toCustomize > Leads or Customize > Contacts.
- In Fields, click the trashcan (
), icon next to the field you want to delete.
Note: Deleting the field also deletes the data of that field.
Merging leads or contacts
You can access the merge feature from the Index or Table views in the Leads and Contacts pages.
To merge leads or contacts
- From the Leads or Contacts page, use either the Index or Table views to select the duplicate records.
- Click the Merge button.
- You’ll be prompted to confirm that you want to merge the records.
- Click Merge.
The topmost selected record is the one that the other record(s) will be merged into. You’ll see a confirmation of the merge in the notes for leads or contacts.
Interesting facts about merging leads or contacts
The merge feature follows certain rules and has the following limitations:
- If the records you've merged had different values in the same data field, Sell automatically creates a custom field to store this data. None of your data is deleted. For example, if the email field contained different values, Sell creates a new custom field called Email#1 and preserves the data.
- You can merge up to 5 records at one time.
- You can’t merge a person contact into a company contact.
- You can’t merge person contacts that have different companies assigned to them.
- You can’t merge a lead into a contact, and vice versa.
- You can convert a lead into a contact.
5 Comments
It would be great to be able to merge Leads and Contacts. We have this problem consistently as we have an integration with our ERP and accounts get created via our website or ERP, and then synced into the CRM. This often duplicates contacts that were based upon the initial lead and the work somebody put into that lead.
Is this on your development roadmap?
Hi Craig!
While there are no plans to have a feature that will allow you to merge a Lead with a Contact, the workaround would be to convert your existing Lead to a Contact and you can then merge the two Contacts. It is not possible to convert a Contact back to a Lead status.
Great articles @...
Quick question on this part: "If the records you've merged had different values in the same data field, Sell automatically creates a custom field to store this data. None of your data is deleted. For example, if the email field contained different values, Sell creates a new custom field called Email#1 and preserves the data."
We are finding it very cumbersome to remove those fields after completing the merge. Is it possible to opt out of this, like you can with the CSV Import (below)?
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041031894-Importing-leads-contacts-and-deals-using-a-CSV-file
Can I do this programmatically? Might be helpful to include details/links on this if so.
Hi Sara,
Sell programmatically merges stuff when importing and converting Leads to Contacts using the Deduplication Rules - by default, it is name/company name + email or phone. The checking and merging are done according to the deduplication rules set for your account in the Settings > Duplicate Management. If you'd like to get to know more about how to set and customize these rules please take a look at this article: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041031974. These rules also apply to Leads and Contacts added during a mass Import to your account.
Sharie Salilaguia
Customer Advocate | Zendesk Sell
Zendesk Sell CRM Visit our Support Center
Contact us: +1 888-670 -4887
support@zendesk.com
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