What is CRM sync?

One-way is straightforward. One system owns the truth and the other follows it.

Two-way is where the hard questions start. When both copies of a record changed since the last sync, something has to decide which wins.

Most systems pick the most recent edit, which is a reasonable default and occasionally the wrong answer.

Duplicates are the other standing problem. Matching on email alone creates two records for the person who used a different address when they called.

Deletions are the case nobody plans. A record removed on one side either disappears on the other or quietly reappears at the next sync, and which of those happens is worth knowing in advance.

Say a customer's record exists in both your CRM and your booking tool. At 10:02 your front desk corrects her phone number in the booking tool, from 555 0133 to 555 0188. Eleven minutes later, a salesperson working from an old email "fixes" her number in the CRM, back to 555 0133, and adds a note. Your sync runs at 10:15.

Under a last-write-wins rule the 10:13 edit is newer, so the wrong number overwrites the right one in both systems and nothing flags it. A field-level rule would do better. Under that rule the booking tool owns phone numbers and the CRM owns notes and deal stage. Each side's changes to the other's fields are ignored. The salesperson's note survives and the good number stays. You'd only discover the first kind of error when a reminder text reaches a stranger.

Matching is where duplicates are born. One number can be stored as (555) 010-0188, as 555.010.0188 or as +1 555 010 0188, and a naive match treats those as three people. Ask whether numbers are converted to the international format, called E.164, before they're compared. Then decide what happens with shared numbers. A family on one landline is several people with a single number, and so is a company switchboard.

You can measure your own duplicate rate in half an hour. Export your contacts, strip everything except digits from the phone column, and count repeats in a spreadsheet. If 4 percent of your records share a number with another record, you know what the sync will be fighting.

Two-way sync earns its complexity when people edit on both sides every day. If your staff really work in one system and the other just receives, a one-way feed gives you the benefit without the conflict rules.

GreetKeeper is the source of what happened on a call, and that record stays with us whether or not it reaches anywhere else.

Where a native connection exists, call records flow into your system as the call ends rather than in an overnight batch.

The integration matrix names which connections are native and which are Zapier routes, because the timing and failure behavior differ.