We’ve had several instances where a lead signs up more than once using different email addresses, but often with the same phone number. Because these come in as separate profiles, they can be assigned to different agents.
This creates a real problem for us. We ask our team to work leads through the CRM’s dialer and text system so we can properly track engagement. Recently, two agents were assigned what turned out to be the same lead, and both were texting him through the CRM. From the client’s side, he was getting messages from two different people on the same number and didn’t know what was going on. From our side, each agent only had half the conversation, so neither had the full picture. It was confusing for everyone lol
What I’d love is a safeguard at the point of sign-up: if a new lead comes in with a phone number that already exists in the system and is assigned to an agent, the new profile should automatically route to that same agent rather than being treated as a brand-new lead.
Ideally this could work as either automatic duplicate detection (matching on phone and/or email) or a filter/rule we could configure ourselves. Even a flag or warning that says “this contact may already exist and is assigned to [Agent]” would go a long way toward preventing the double-assignment issue.
Is anything like this possible today, or on the roadmap? And in the meantime, has anyone found a workaround for catching duplicate leads before they get assigned to two people?
Totally understand the use case here. However, there are some things to talk through.
First of all, email address is a primary key in the REW Lead System. That is what we check to see if someone is unique or not. With phone number, it is far less common for someone to have the same email address or a shared email address. In fact, that is almost never the situation. Phone numbers can still be home phones, shared phones, office lines, etc., so it is not always the case that it’s a one-to-one. Usually, a cell phone number is one-to-one, but we are not specifically asking for a cell phone number. We are asking for their primary phone number, whichever that is.
The other thing to consider is lead privacy. A potentially separating husband and wife might have the same phone number, for instance. That might be a stretch, but I’m just trying to talk through it. That being said, there are things you can do. For instance, you would have your retainer programmers. You could have it so that the system was set up to listen for a phone number and then suggest, “It looks like you may already have a profile. Would you like to merge this profile?”
To be clear, that technology does not exist in Real Estate Webmasters today. We would either need to be done custom or in R&D. I know that’s what you’re asking about. I know you know that it’s not available today. It’s an interesting suggestion. It’s something we can put on the suggestions list with Fernando and team, but we probably want to talk through it a little bit more first in terms of whether or not that is the exact solution that’s best.
Totally understand what you’re asking for. Let me know your thoughts above and if anyone else has anything to say on this, because de-duplicating leads is important and we’d like to improve that functionality if we can.