How to master Freshdesk merge tickets: A 2025 guide

We’ve all been there. You glance at your support queue and see three, four, maybe even five tickets from the same customer about the very same issue. It’s a familiar story for any support team that’s even moderately busy. These duplicate tickets don't just clog up your queue; they throw off your metrics and give your agents a headache trying to figure out which conversation to reply to.

While Freshdesk has a built-in feature to merge tickets, the standard process has some serious hidden drawbacks that can actually hurt your customer experience. This guide will walk you through the normal way to handle Freshdesk merge tickets, shine a light on the limitations you'll hit, and show you a smarter, AI-driven way to keep your support queue clean and efficient.

What does the Freshdesk merge tickets feature actually do?

At its core, merging tickets in Freshdesk is just about combining two or more tickets into one primary conversation. When you merge, you’re essentially tidying up your inbox by pulling all the duplicate requests into a single thread.

Here’s a quick rundown of what goes on behind the scenes:

• One ticket is picked to be the "primary" ticket, which becomes the main thread for the conversation.

• All the other tickets you selected are now considered "secondary."

• The messages from all the secondary tickets get moved into the primary one, neatly sorted by time.

• Those secondary tickets are then closed out for good.

• A private note is added to each closed secondary ticket, linking back to the main one.

It sounds straightforward, but that last point about the "private note" is where things often start to go wrong for your customers.

How to handle Freshdesk merge tickets: The manual way

Before we dive into the problems, it helps to know how the standard process works. If you need to manually merge tickets in Freshdesk, it’s a pretty simple (though click-heavy) process.

Here’s the step-by-step:

1. Pick your tickets: From your main ticket list, use the checkboxes to select all the duplicate tickets you want to combine.

2. Start the merge: Once you’ve selected them, a "Merge" button will pop up in the action bar at the top. Give that a click.

3. Choose the main ticket: A window will appear showing the tickets you’ve selected. You’ll need to decide which one will be the primary ticket that the others will be folded into.

4. Confirm it: After you’ve chosen the primary ticket, click "Continue," and then "Merge" to seal the deal. Just a heads-up, this action can't be undone, so double-check that you’ve got the right tickets.

The not-so-obvious problems with merging tickets

On the surface, the manual process seems fine. But it creates a few knock-on effects that can frustrate your agents and, more importantly, your customers. These are the issues that usually push teams to start looking for a better, more automated fix.

How merging tickets creates a confusing customer experience

This is probably the biggest issue with the native Freshdesk merge tickets feature. When a secondary ticket gets merged, its entire contents are dumped into the primary ticket as a private note.

So, what does your customer see? From their end, the reply they just spent time writing has simply vanished. Poof. They can't see their own message in the ticket thread, which is incredibly confusing and can easily make them feel like you’re ignoring them. The only way to fix this is for an agent to manually dig up that private note and change its visibility to "public." Not only is that a pain, but it also sends the customer an email notification about the merge, which just adds more noise to their inbox.

Why merging tickets is a repetitive time-sink for agents

Merging tickets is a completely manual and reactive chore. An agent has to first spot the duplicates and then go through the multi-click dance to combine them. This admin work eats up a surprising amount of time that could be spent solving actual customer problems, especially when things get busy. Some industry reports even suggest that agents can spend up to 10% of their day just cleaning up duplicate tickets. That’s a huge productivity drain that really adds up over time.

Why it's easy to make mistakes when merging tickets

Any time you have a manual, repetitive task, human error is bound to creep in. An agent rushing to clear their queue might accidentally merge two totally unrelated tickets, creating a jumbled mess for everyone involved. Or, they might miss the duplicates entirely. This can lead to two different agents working on the same issue without knowing it, which wastes even more time and often results in sending inconsistent or conflicting advice to the customer.

Can you automate Freshdesk merge tickets?

To get away from the headaches of doing it all by hand, many teams head over to the Freshworks Marketplace to find an automation app. This feels like the logical next move, but these solutions often come with their own set of frustrating limitations.

The official Auto Ticket Merger app for Freshdesk: Simple, but not smart

Freshworks offers its own Auto Ticket Merger app, which automatically merges tickets from the same email address if they arrive within a certain timeframe. For example, you can tell it to merge any tickets from the same person if they're created within 30 minutes of each other.

The problem, as plenty of user reviews will tell you, is that the app has zero intelligence. It can't understand context. It will happily merge tickets with completely different subjects and content, just because they came from the same person in a short window. This can cause some pretty embarrassing mix-ups and create even more cleanup work for your agents. The app also has other blind spots, it doesn’t work for tickets coming from social media or phone calls, and it often fails if your tickets have mandatory fields.

Third-party apps for Freshdesk: More powerful, but more complex

Other apps from third-party developers, like Merge Duplicate Tickets, offer more advanced, rule-based merging. You can set up custom rules to match tickets based on things like subject lines or custom fields, giving you a bit more control.

This approach, however, comes with a trade-off. You're now adding another paid tool to your tech stack, complete with its own subscription fee, setup process, and interface to learn and manage. It solves one very specific problem but makes your overall operations more complex and expensive.

A smarter solution for merging tickets: Using AI for intelligent triage

The best way to handle duplicate tickets isn't just about merging them faster; it's about using intelligence to manage your entire queue more proactively. Instead of a simple merging tool, an integrated AI triage system can identify, categorize, and act on tickets with far more accuracy and control.

Go beyond rules with AI that understands context

This is where a tool like eesel AI's AI Triage really changes the game. It doesn't just lean on basic rules like "same sender, same time." Instead, eesel AI connects directly to your Freshdesk account and actually learns from your team's historical ticket data. By analyzing thousands of your past conversations, it starts to understand the nuances of your customer requests. This allows it to spot true duplicates based on their actual content and intent, not just superficial details.

Automate workflows with total control and confidence

With eesel AI, you get a fully customizable workflow engine. You get to decide exactly what happens when the AI spots a likely duplicate. You can have it merge the ticket, add a specific tag, route it to a specialist, or just close it out. This gives you a level of control that rigid marketplace apps simply can't offer.

Best of all, eesel AI comes with a powerful simulation mode. Before you turn on any automation, you can test it on thousands of your past tickets in a completely safe environment. You get to see exactly how the AI would have handled each ticket, letting you fine-tune its behavior and build real confidence before it ever touches a live customer conversation. This takes away all the risk of accidentally merging unrelated tickets.

A screenshot showing eesel AI's simulation mode, which allows teams to test and refine their automated Freshdesk merge tickets workflow before implementation.

Stop manual Freshdesk merge tickets, start automating

When you lay out all the options, the best path forward becomes pretty clear. Manual merging is a drain on your team and creates a clunky experience for customers. Basic app automation is risky and doesn't have the smarts to do the job reliably. The modern, effective approach is to bring in an AI-powered system.

The goal shouldn't be to get better at the manual chore of merging tickets. The goal should be to build an intelligent system that handles duplicate tickets, and other repetitive tasks, for you. This frees up your team to focus on what they do best: giving your customers exceptional support.

Take control of Freshdesk merge tickets and your queue with eesel AI

Ready to move beyond manual merges and clunky automation workarounds? eesel AI integrates seamlessly with Freshdesk to give you intelligent triage, automated workflows, and powerful agent assistance.

• See how eesel AI can transform your Freshdesk workflows.

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