Using the Customer Merge Feature

Introduction

Although Channergy is designed to minimize the possibility of multiple customers being created, this does happen and the software has a tool that will allow you to combine customers and their related data.  It is called the Merge feature.  In a nutshell the process is as follows.

• Locate the record that you want to use as the master customer record and mark it as the Master customer record.  Usually this is the one that has the most current contact information.
• Locate the record that has the duplicate information that you want to merge into the master record and mark it as the Duplicate customer record.
• Merge the two together.  This will merge all of the orders, contact log information and contacts from the duplicate customer into the Master and remove the duplicate.

The Details

As is the case with any activity of this type, it is highly recommended that you create a backup of your Channergy database before proceeding.

Mark the Master Customer Record

For our example we will merge Mary Smiths records into John Smiths records in the Cell Phones database.

1. Locate the Master record.  Below is John Smiths information, you can see at the top of the record above the tabs that John has 14 orders in the system and 9 contacts.                                                                         
2. Click on the Mark as Master from the Merge menu in the customer screen.                                                                   

Mark the Duplicate Customer Record

1. Locate the Duplicate record.  Below is Mary Smiths information, you can see at the top of the record above the tabs that Mary has 1 orders in the system and 1 contact.                                                                        
2. Click on the Mark as Duplicate from the Merge menu in the customer screen.                                                              
   1. Note that there is a check box next to the Mark as Master indicating that you have selected a master record.

Merge the Customers

Once you have identified the customers that you want to merge, simply click on the Merge/Purge Marked Records… from the Merge menu 

You will note that there is a check box next to both the Mark as Master and Mark as Duplicate menu options.  You will get a confirmation dialog box asking your permission to merge the two records.

After the process is complete, you can see below that John Smith now has 15 orders and 10 contacts,

and there is no record of Mary Smith in the customer database.

Other Options

The customer merge feature has other menu options that are described below

The Clear Marked Records simply unlinks the selected Master and Duplicate records.  This is the “Do Over” option (as long as you do not merge them as above).

The Go to Master option simply moves you to the customer record that you selected as the master record.

The Go to Duplicate option simply moves you to the customer record that you selected as the duplicate record.