Testing customer identity matching during migration

Test customer matching against cases with known answers before attaching imported tickets to destination profiles. Record which source person each profile represents and which tickets belong to them. Hold uncertain matches for review: a wrong match can place case history on another person’s profile.

Build a reference set

Choose cases that challenge the intended rule: an unchanged trusted ID, a changed email address, a shared inbox, duplicate profiles, similar names, a missing ID and a contact without a verified email. Record the expected destination profile and the evidence for each decision. Limit personal details in the test sheet and restrict access to it.

Use a stable, verified customer identifier where the organisation has one. Document which system issued it and whether it remains valid across both platforms. If matching must rely on email, define how the process handles shared and secondary addresses, case differences and unverified details.

Export fields can affect the result. Check which available export includes the identity fields your matching process needs. A test using an export without those fields could miss an existing address and produce an unnecessary duplicate.

Compare actual matches with expected matches

Import a controlled sample and compare each source person and ticket with its destination profile. Check the requester, organisation, reply address and history visible to both agent and customer. Classify each result as a correct match, no match or conflicting possible matches.

Check the destination’s own identity rules. In Zendesk’s authenticated messaging setup, an external ID is the primary identifier; email is considered only under documented conditions. Treat unauthenticated email-based identity claims as a potential impersonation risk. These messaging rules are specific to that configuration, so test the rule used by the destination being migrated.

Before merging profiles, confirm from reliable evidence that they represent the same person. Retain the old-to-new ID mapping and the match basis. Test an incoming reply to ensure it reaches the intended profile and case.

Decide what can be released

Review shared addresses, conflicting IDs, ambiguous names and profiles with sensitive history individually. Keep unresolved tickets out of automatic profile merges and route them through a restricted manual process until their owner is established. An overall match percentage cannot show whether these high-risk cases were matched safely.