Duplicate contacts: why they happen and how to merge them
The same customer sometimes ends up in AISAR as two separate contacts — say, if they wrote in from a different number, or through a channel AISAR has no way to match against an existing card. Here's why that happens, and how to merge duplicates into one contact by hand.
What you need to know
- A contact card ties together every channel account linked to it, but AISAR auto-matches them only by a phone number that already matches, within the company.
- If a customer writes in through a channel with no identifier shared with an existing card (a different WhatsApp number, say, or Instagram with no phone on file), AISAR creates a new contact for them instead of guessing at a match.
- Merging is a one-way action: one of the two contacts stays, the other is archived with a note that it was merged.
How to merge two contacts
Merging starts from a contact card inside a conversation, not from the general contacts list.
- In the Chat section, open a conversation with the contact you want to remove as a duplicate — on the contact panel, open the card for editing.
- At the bottom of the card, click "Merge with an existing contact".
- In the search that opens, find and select the contact that should survive — it becomes the primary one, and the current card is moved into it.
- Confirm: AISAR shows a warning "This account will be moved to [name]" — once confirmed, the action can't be undone from the interface yourself.
After merging, the surviving contact gathers every linked channel, phone number, and email from both contacts, and the entire correspondence (conversations and per-channel threads) moves under it. The other contact is marked as merged and no longer shows up in normal lists.
How to spot a duplicate before merging
Duplicates are usually noticeable by a matching name across conversations on different channels, or a repeated phone number in a different format (with or without the country code, with or without spaces). Searching all of the company's correspondence also helps surface both cards for the same customer — see Searching all company messages.
Common issues
| Symptom | Cause and what to do |
|---|---|
| The "Merge with an existing contact" button is missing from the card | Make sure you opened the actual contact card (not a team member) from the conversation panel in the Chat section. |
| The search doesn't find the contact you want to merge into | Try searching by the phone number in a different format, or by part of the name — this search covers the company's contacts, excluding the one already open. |
| You merged in the wrong direction — the data ended up on the wrong card | Merging can't be undone from the interface — contact AISAR support with both contact names or IDs and the time of the merge. |
See also
Working with a customer card, funnels, and deals — in Contacts and deals: customer card, funnels, stages. Chat basics — in Working in AISAR chat.