Merging Tickets in ServiceNow
ServiceNow does not ship an incident merge button. What it gives you instead is relationships, and used properly they are arguably better for ITSM reporting.
Merging duplicates in ServiceNow
Decide which incident is the master
Usually the first one raised, or the one already under investigation with work notes on it.
Relate the duplicate to it
Use a duplicate relationship, or make the master a parent incident and attach the duplicates as children. Many organisations add a "Duplicate of" reference field to make this explicit and reportable.
Close the duplicate with a clear reason
Resolve it as a duplicate, referencing the master, so the requester still gets a notification and your reporting can separate real volume from duplicate volume.
Why this is the better pattern anyway
Frequently asked questions
Can you merge incidents in ServiceNow?+
Not natively. You relate them and close the duplicate with a reference to the master, which preserves better reporting than a merge would.
What about the customer replying to the closed one?+
This is the weakness of the relationship approach. Set the resolution notes to point clearly at the master incident number so replies land where you want them.
ServiceNow can't merge. Zendesk and Freshdesk, with HubSpot coming soon can.
On the platforms that do support merging, Ticket Merger finds the duplicate pairs as they arrive and merges them through the native API, so the conversation never splits in the first place.
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