Merging Duplicate Customers in Bulk

Merge Duplicate Customers lets you find duplicate customer records already in your account and merge them in bulk. ChartMogul scans your customers for records that share one or two properties you choose, such as external ID, domain, or primary contact email. It groups the matches into sets of duplicates and suggests which record in each set to merge the others into.

Use it to clean up duplicates that built up before you set up merging, such as leads that later became paying customers in your billing system, or customers that exist in both your old and new billing systems after a migration. To merge new duplicates automatically as they're created, set up an automation.

Here's what we cover in this article:

• Before you begin
• Scanning for duplicates
• Reviewing duplicates
• Merging duplicates
• Example scenarios

Before you begin

• Decide which property reliably identifies a duplicate in your data. External ID and primary contact email are usually more precise than company name, which different customers can share.
• Review how merging affects customer data. The primary customer keeps all their data, while some information from the other records is lost.
• Each scan matches on one property or one pair of properties.
• You can't start a scan while a bulk merge is in progress.

Scanning for duplicates

To scan for duplicates:

1. Navigate to Settings > Data & Integrations > Merge Duplicate Customers.

   Under Match duplicates by, select the property that must match for customers to be considered duplicates:

   • External ID – The customer's ID in their data source
   • Domain – The customer's website address
   • Primary Contact Email – The email address of the customer's primary contact
   • Company Name – The name of the customer's company
   • Two Properties – Two properties that must both match. Select them in the two drop-downs that appear. Choose from any customer property, including custom attributes.
2. Select SCAN.

ChartMogul remembers the criteria from your last scan and prefills them the next time you open the page.

Reviewing duplicates

The results table shows each set of duplicates as a group of rows, with the following details for each customer:

• Customer
• Merge Direction
• Domain
• External ID
• Primary Contact Email
• Source
• Paid Subscriber Status

If a customer has already been merged from several records, External ID and Source show Multiple. Hover over Multiple to see all values.

Choosing the primary customer

In each set, one record is marked Primary in the Merge Direction column. This is the customer the other duplicates will be merged into. By default, ChartMogul selects the oldest customer in the set, the same way merge automations do.

To merge a set into a different record, select MAKE PRIMARY on that record.

Merging duplicates

To merge duplicates:

1. Select the checkbox next to each set you want to merge, or select Select all above the table to select every set.
2. Select MERGE X DUPLICATES.
3. Review the number of duplicates to be merged and confirm.

ChartMogul shows the progress of the merge. Large merges can take some time, and you can leave the page while the merge runs. When the merge finishes, the merged sets are removed from the table, and any sets you didn't select remain for later.

Merged customers can be unmerged manually, one at a time.

Example scenarios

Merging leads into paying customers

A customer can exist as a lead from your CRM or trial source, and also as a paying customer from your billing system. Scan by Primary Contact Email or Domain. The lead was usually created first, so ChartMogul is likely to select it as the primary. If you'd rather keep the billing record's details, select MAKE PRIMARY on the billing record before merging.

Cleaning up after a billing migration

You've moved from one billing system to another, and some customers now exist in both. Scan by Primary Contact Email, or by External ID if you kept the same IDs. ChartMogul selects the older record from your previous billing system as the primary. Check the primary in each set and change it if needed before merging.