Some customers may notice that the Salesforce integration creates duplicate Contacts or Leads when receiving or making multiple calls to or from the same phone number within a short time frame. This typically happens when those calls occur less than five minutes apart.

This article explains why this occurs and how to reduce the risk of duplicates.

When duplicates are created

If two or more calls to or from the same number occur less than five minutes apart, you may see this behavior:

  1. First call
    • When the first call comes in, the integration searches for existing Contacts, Leads, or Accounts that have a phone number matching the dialed number.
    • The search follows the matching logic described in the Logging your calls in Salesforce article.
    • If no existing entry is found and the integration is configured to create new contacts, a new Contact is created in Salesforce.
  2. Second call (within five minutes)
    • When the second call comes in, the integration again searches for existing Contacts, Leads, or Accounts with a matching phone number.
    • At this point, Salesforce returns no matches, even though a contact with that phone number was just created from the first call.
    • As a result, the integration creates another Contact in Salesforce with the same phone number, causing a duplicate.

Why Salesforce returns no matches

This behavior is related to how Salesforce search indexing works.

According to Salesforce documentation:

  • The Salesforce search index can be rebuilt a combined maximum of 60 times per hour for all storefronts in an org.
  • There must be at least 5 minutes between index rebuilds for an individual storefront (see Salesforce Help and Training Community).

Because of this:

  • When the first contact is created, Salesforce may not yet have indexed that new record.
  • By the time the second call arrives (within five minutes), the new contact is not included in the search index.
  • The integration searches for the number, receives no results, and then creates another contact with the same phone number.
Important: This indexing delay is a limitation on the Salesforce side and affects how quickly newly created records become searchable for the integration.

How to reduce the creation of duplicate records

Since the indexing delay is controlled by Salesforce, the most effective mitigation is to adjust how frequently calls are made to or received from the same number.

Steps

  1. Avoid back to back calls to the same number when possible
    • When operationally feasible, wait at least 5 minutes between calls to or from the same phone number.
    • This gives Salesforce time to index the contact created from the first call so that it can be found by the integration on the next call.
  2. Monitor and clean up duplicates periodically
    • Regularly review new Contacts and Leads created by the integration.
    • Use Salesforce duplicate management tools or reports to identify and merge duplicate records created within short time frames.
  3. Review integration configuration
    • Check whether your Salesforce integration is configured to create new contacts for unmatched numbers.
    • If duplicates remain a significant issue, consider adjusting your process for new record creation or adding internal checks before placing repeated calls to the same number within a few minutes.
Note: Because this behavior is driven by Salesforce's indexing mechanism, there is no direct setting in the Aircall integration that can fully prevent duplicates when multiple calls to the same number are made within a five minute window.