Customer duplicates — why the same person may appear twice

Step by step

Find the records in question

1. Go to Orders → Customers.
2. Enter an email, surname, or phone number in Search by name, email, phone, VAT ID, identifier…. The list reloads automatically 0.3 seconds after the last character.
3. Search also covers the record number and customer ID, even though the hint does not say so — you can paste just the identifier.
4. If the results contain more than one row for the same person, continue. The Orders column immediately shows which record is empty.

Determine whether they really are duplicates

1. Open the first record by clicking its row.
2. Below the customer name is a gray badge with the customer ID — a ten-character abbreviation. Clicking it copies it to the clipboard (without an on-screen confirmation).
3. Go to the adjacent record with the Next (→) arrow or the → key, without returning to the list, and read its identifier.
4. Two different identifiers only mean that the channel sent two different buyer identifiers. By themselves, they do not prove either that these are two people or that they are one.
5. The Integrations tab on both records settles the matter. Different channels → this is not a fault; it is expected. Same channel → the customer created two buyer accounts there, and the system has no way to link them.
6. Also check the Addresses used tab. The same address on both records makes it more likely that this is one person — but it is not proof and does not change what you can do next.

Decide what to do

1. They cannot be merged — the feature is not available in the interface or API.
2. You can delete a record with zero in the Orders column (Deleting customers).
3. A record with order history cannot be deleted — it will be skipped during bulk deletion, without a separate explanation of which record it was.
4. If you need the buyer’s combined spend across several channels, manually add up Total spent from each profile (Customer card — what the statistics tell you). No screen does this for you.

How the system recognizes a customer

When an order is imported, the customer is identified by a hash calculated from two things: the integration and the buyer ID on the channel.

Matching is exact, not approximate. The system does not compare first names, look for similar email addresses, or guess.

When a match is found, the record is updated in place — phone, email, first name, surname, and tax number take the new values from the order.

Why you see duplicates

The integration is part of the identity. The same person buying on two channels has two separate records in the customer registry.

This is not a fault. Channels do not provide a shared buyer identifier, and joining records by first and last name would create incorrect matches — two different people with the same surname would get a shared purchase history.

The consequence for statistics: customer spend is calculated per channel. To see “how much this person has spent with us in total,” you need to add it up manually.

There is no merge feature

The system has no customer merge feature. There is no button or bulk operation, and it is not available in the interface or API.

If duplicates are a problem, the only thing you can do is delete records without orders (Deleting customers) — a customer with order history cannot be deleted, appropriately.

A customer without an identifier will not be created

An order from a buyer for whom the channel sent neither an external identifier nor a login will not create a customer. This usually results in a ticket (Where issues come from and how they close automatically).

Addresses follow their own rules

An address is recognized by the full set of fields — first name, surname, street, number, postal code, city, country, and pickup point. In addition, a match is rejected if the phone number, tax number, company name, or pickup-point name has changed.

Practical consequence: a parcel locker and the same person’s home address are two separate addresses, as they should be — they are two different delivery locations.

That is why a customer profile usually shows several addresses, ordered by frequency of use (Customer card — what the statistics tell you).