How to arrange the merge of records on the initiative of the user?

Question

CRM

I am developing an interface for a specific CRM system.

For each new client, a card is created, which indicates, among other things, the phone number and name of the person who applied.

There are situations in which two cards of the same client appear in the database. It’s just that during the initial contact, the data may differ - different contact persons, different phones, and later it may turn out that this is the same client.

In this regard, it is necessary to merge data from two cards:

1. Some data may differ and you need to save both options (for example, if a client has two phones, both of them need to be saved);
2. Some data may coincide (then their combination is easy and automatically done);
3. And some data may differ only in wording, but be the same in essence (for example, in a note to the first card it will be written that the client asked to call him only before lunch, and to the second - to call him only until 14:00). Such data must be compared manually and the option that is more informative should be left.

The first solution is to display two cards side by side (for ease of comparison) and show action icons next to each field. But then it will not be clear to the user which of the options will be saved, which may cause confusion and loss of information.

The second option is to display three cards side by side (the third is the final option, which will eventually be saved). Here we get rid of the confusion, but in the end we get more entities than we originally had, which is not good.

Perhaps there are some other options or generally accepted methods for solving such problems?

Answer 1

Show the difference between two cards, for example, in the form of a vertical table with three columns - the name of the field, the value from one card, the value from the other. When clicking on the field, the user notes which value to leave (and if it can also be changed, then generally shine).
You can also place buttons nearby to open the corresponding cards in case you want to see all the data in its entirety, and not just the difference.

Answer 2

In this regard, you can learn from Google, when I combined contacts from my phone with Google contacts, I fiddled only with the “merge” item, after which I immediately received the final business card.
The option above, by the way, is more visual for non-advanced users, yes.