Currently, the telephone number is not a unique identifier and therefore the contact generated by a Whatsapp message duplicates the user.
As the email is the only unique identifier, but is not a mandatory information, there's no way to avoid this duplication.
I suggest implementing this option of phones also being unique identifiers.
Make phone a unique end-user identifier
In my case, when creating a user with a phone number to send a message via Whatsapp, I can send the message, but when responding, a new user is created for the customer. The number is exactly the same.
Therefore, every day, when contacting us via WhatsApp (one of our most important channels), my agents are unable to identify customers, who, although they were initially contacted by us, respond disconnectedly, without identification.
It was necessary to create custom bot responses for each agent in order to correctly target the agent.
I am currently having this problem and, when contacting the support team, I was informed that this happens because currently the only unique identifier is the email, therefore the behavior of duplicating WhatsApp contacts is expected.
It would be important to consider, in addition to email, also the telephone number as a unique identifier for end users.
Currently, only email is available, but it is not mandatory, which makes the process vulnerable and makes the agent's work very complex.
Hey @jéssica15, James here from the Zendesk product team,
Can I confirm if you turn on the Validate user phone numbers it resolves the issue?
This setting will force new users to have a correctly formatted E.164 phone number that should match the format from WhatsApp and thus stop the duplicate user. Some more information on E.164 phone numbers for Zendesk.
Please note, with this setting turned on, creating users with incorrectly formatted phone numbers will cause errors.
You can enable this setting by going to Admin Center > People > End Users and selecting the Validate user phone numbers setting.
I hope this helps.
James
Hello James
Thank you for the comment, but it's not working.
The system limit only input a new phone number without area code, but there's no no impediment to placing it without +country code.
Furthermore, the problem was identified the first time when completely adding the phone number. The duplication was generated with the same phone number and format.
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