The same person gets entered twice — once from an enquiry, once from a list, once by a rep in a hurry. Two records means half the history each, and the rep looking at the wrong one thinks nobody has called.

Two ways to find them

• A banner on the contact when the CRM thinks it has spotted a likely duplicate.
• Merge Contacts, under Tools in a tribe, which lists every suspected pair.

Merging a pair

You choose which record is merged from and which is merged into. The record you merge into survives; the other one is folded into it and its history comes across.

Keep the record with the most history — the one with the calls, the notes and the deals — even if the other one has a tidier name. Names are easy to fix afterwards; history is not.

Merging a lot at once

Merge All Matching Pairs works through everything currently listed. Narrow the list with the match reasons first — pairs must match every reason you select, so the more you tick the more confident the list becomes.

Stopping them happening

• Search before creating a contact by hand.
• Include email addresses in imported files wherever you can.
• Run the merge tool after every big import, while you still remember what you loaded.