Find and Prevent Duplicates

Two records at target Account Ferrow Industrial: Marcus Webb and Marcus Webber. Same first name, near-match surname, same company domain, similar title. A rules-only fuzzy matcher scores this pair high enough to auto-merge under a two-outcome model: merge, or don't. The auto-merge runs. Marcus Webb turns out to be a director-level buyer already mid-evaluation; Marcus Webber is a separate engineering contact who was never on that call. Merging them collapses two people's activity history into one record, with no clean way to undo it.

Matching isn't the hard part

Exact-match signals, a verified email or a platform-supplied ID, are reliable. Fuzzy signals such as name similarity and shared company domain catch more real duplicates and more false positives at similar rates. A three-outcome model beats a two-outcome one: auto-merge when confidence is high enough that review adds no signal, human review when it's plausible but not certain, and no match when it's too low to route anywhere. Account-level merges carry their own, stricter rule: an Account carries Opportunity and contract history, so a wrong merge there is categorically more expensive than a wrong Contact merge, and stays review-only even when Contact merges can safely auto-run.

Adjudicate the pair, protect the customer contact

The duplicate-pair-set fixture holds a high-confidence pair that auto-merges under the survivorship rules, alongside Marcus Webb and Marcus Webber, who route to review instead. Separately, a bulk import created a near-duplicate contact, Rina Fields, by copying Priya Shah's phone number and email domain onto a new record. The match score is high, but Priya has an open Opportunity, so the protected-record rule blocks the merge and routes it to review with that reason stated.

Carry this into your business

A duplicate pipeline that only knows “merge” or “don't” will eventually merge two real people, and there's no undo button for that mistake. Build the review tier before you turn on auto-merge, and protect any record a wrong merge would actually hurt.