Unified Contacts

Deck's unified contacts system automatically consolidates customer feedback from all your integrated tools, giving you a complete view of each customer's interactions and feedback.

How It Works

When you integrate tools like Intercom, Zendesk, Slack, PostHog, or upload NPS surveys, Deck automatically:

1. Identifies customers across different platforms using their email, phone number, or platform-specific IDs
2. Creates a unified contact that represents the same person across all tools
3. Links all feedback (support tickets, survey responses, user interviews, etc.) to that contact

This means you can see every piece of feedback from a customer in one place, regardless of which tool it came from.

Viewing Contact Information

Contact information is automatically displayed throughout Deck:

• Intercom integration page: See contacts associated with your Intercom conversations
• Zendesk integration page: View contacts linked to support tickets
• Feedback timeline: See which contact provided each piece of feedback

How Contacts Are Matched

Deck uses intelligent matching to identify the same person across different tools:

Email Matching

• Automatically normalizes email addresses (handles Gmail dots and plus-signs, Outlook variations)
• Example: john.doe+tag@gmail.com and johndoe@gmail.com are recognized as the same person

Platform IDs

Deck also matches contacts using platform-specific identifiers:

• Intercom user IDs
• Zendesk requester IDs
• Slack user IDs
• PostHog distinct IDs
• Salesforce contact IDs
• HubSpot contact IDs

Phone Numbers

If available, phone numbers are also used to match contacts across platforms.

Contact Information

For each contact, Deck stores:

• Name: Display name from any integrated platform
• Email: Primary email address
• Phone: Phone number (if available)
• Company: Associated company name
• Avatar: Profile picture from integrated platforms
• Activity: First and last seen timestamps
• Feedback sources: All platforms where this contact has provided feedback

Feedback Timeline

Each contact has a unified feedback timeline showing:

• Customer service tickets from Intercom and Zendesk
• NPS responses from surveys
• Survey responses from custom surveys
• User interview insights from uploaded transcripts
• Slack messages from connected channels
• PostHog events from product analytics

All feedback is chronologically organized, making it easy to understand a customer's journey and sentiment over time.

Privacy & Data Management

• Contacts are organization-scoped - your team only sees contacts associated with your organization
• Contact data is automatically updated when new feedback is received
• Historical feedback is automatically linked to contacts when integrations are first set up
• Contact merging is logged for audit purposes

Technical Details

Supported Identity Types

Deck supports the following identity types for contact matching:

• EMAIL
• PHONE
• INTERCOM_ID
• ZENDESK_ID
• SLACK_ID
• POSTHOG_ID
• SALESFORCE_ID
• HUBSPOT_ID
• GONG_ID

Automatic Backfilling

When you connect a new integration, Deck automatically:

1. Processes all historical feedback
2. Creates or updates contacts based on that feedback
3. Links all historical data to the appropriate contacts

This happens in the background without any action required from you.

Best Practices

1. Connect multiple tools: The more integrations you connect, the more complete your contact profiles become
2. Use consistent email addresses: Encourage customers to use the same email across platforms for better matching
3. Review feedback by contact: When analyzing feedback, group by contact to understand individual customer journeys
4. Track customer accounts: Link contacts to customer accounts in your CRM for company-level insights

Common Questions

Q: What happens if a contact changes their email? A: Deck stores all email addresses as separate identities. Both old and new emails will be associated with the same contact.

Q: Can I manually merge duplicate contacts? A: Manual contact merging is planned for a future release. Currently, contacts are merged automatically when matching identities are detected.

Q: Is contact data shared across organizations? A: No, contacts are completely isolated by organization. Your team only sees contacts associated with your organization's data.

Q: How far back does historical data go? A: When you connect an integration, Deck processes all available historical data from that platform.