A repeated message from a buyer is not always a new request. For reporting, assign a stable request number and link clarifications to it, while preserving the original records. A match of name or subject alone does not provide grounds to merge two people.
Define the unit of accounting
Choose what a request means in your process: for example, an inquiry about a specific task that the team has accepted for work. A message, a person, a task, and an order are different entities. One buyer may be discussing two independent orders at the same time; two members of the client's team may write about one task.
For linking, use a confirmed request number or another working identifier. Keep contact details in a secure system with the necessary access, and put anonymized designations into the analytical example.
Five records: two requests and one question
Training register: record A — new request L1; B — confirmed clarification L1; C — new request L2; D — confirmed clarification L2; E — a message with a similar name, no link established. The result is two confirmed requests and one unresolved message, not automatically five or three requests.
Keep the original rows for A–E and a separate link field. For B and D, state the basis for merging. For E, ask a clarifying question in the normal workflow; until there is an answer, do not merge the record based on a guess. After confirmation, update the result while leaving a trace of the change.
Do not transfer the purchase rule to any signal
For example, Google Analytics describes eliminating duplicate purchases in a web stream by transaction_id, with caveats about a single user. This is a specific purchase mechanic, not automatic merging of conversations across all CRMs. For requests, your rule needs to be defined and tested separately.
Before reporting, show the number of original messages, confirmed requests, and unresolved cases. Then the reduction in duplicates will not look like an inexplicable drop in demand, and the team will be able to reproduce the count.
Diagram: 1 — keep the original messages; 2 — link only confirmed matches; 3 — count requests and uncertain cases separately.
More practical instructions are in the Boosted blog.
Sources
Google Analytics: transaction identifiers. Verified on 21 September 2026. Practical examples and diagrams are editorial methodology; the illustrative numbers are not client data.
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