Merging duplicate tickets and merging users – Gravity CX

Ref: A14 · Track: Agent Essentials · Time to complete: ~4 min

Why this matters

Customers love filing the same ticket three different ways — email, then chat, then a phone call. Left alone, you end up with three tickets and three agents unknowingly doing the same work. Merging fixes it.

Two kinds of merge

Merge	What gets merged	What's left
Ticket merge	Multiple tickets from the same requester combined into one	One primary ticket with the full history; the others are closed with a link back
User merge	Two user profiles for the same person	One primary user record with combined history; the other is deleted

Both operations are one-way. You cannot undo either.

Merging tickets

Open either of the duplicate tickets.
In the top-right menu (the ••• dots), click Merge into another ticket.
Search for the other ticket by ID or subject.
Pick the primary (the one to keep) and the merged-in (the one to close).
Optionally add internal notes to each explaining what happened.
Click Confirm and merge.

The merged-in ticket gets closed with an internal note linking to the primary. The primary ticket gets an internal note listing every ticket that was merged into it.

Which one is primary?

Usually the older ticket (earlier ID) — its SLA clock has been running longest and you want to keep that history. But sometimes the newer one is "primary" because it has more context. Pick whichever has the better conversation.

What gets merged

Public replies from both tickets appear in the primary.
Internal notes from both.
Tags combine.
Attachments, side conversations, custom fields — all preserved.

What doesn't

The secondary ticket's SLA state doesn't transfer. Its clocks freeze where they are.

Merging users

Used when the same human has two Zendesk profiles — usually because they filed a ticket from their phone (creating a phone-only profile) and then emailed from their work address (creating an email profile).

Open the duplicate user's profile.
Click Merge in the user's action menu.
Search for the primary profile (usually by email or name).
Verify — Zendesk will list both profiles side by side. Triple check they're the same person.
Pick which profile is the primary (kept) and which is merged in (deleted).
Confirm.

⚠️ User merge is destructive. The merged-in user is permanently deleted. All their tickets reassign to the primary profile. If you merge the wrong two people together, you've just linked one customer's ticket history to another customer's identity. Escalate to an admin if unsure.

Common scenarios

Same customer, two tickets about the same issue — merge tickets, keep the one with the most history.
Same customer, two profiles (phone + email) — merge users, keeping the email one as primary (agents search by email more often).
Same customer, two tickets about different issues — don't merge. Leave them separate so each is reportable.
Different customers, one family sharing an email — don't merge. Really don't.

Quick check — have you got this?

You find two tickets from jane@acme.com about the same login issue. What do you do?
A customer's name appears twice in Zendesk — once with their email, once with just a phone number. Is it safe to merge immediately?
Can you un-merge after a mistake?

Answers

- Merge tickets. Keep the older one as primary if it has the better history. - No — verify it's the same person first (check the phone-only profile's ticket content to confirm). Escalate if unsure. User merge is permanent. - No. Both merge types are one-way. Restore via support ticket with Zendesk if you really have to.

A12 — Follow-up tickets vs reopens
A04 — Filtering and bulk-updating tickets