How to stop the AI from merging callers who share a phone number

By default, your AI agent remembers callers by their phone number. If the same number calls back, the agent recognises it and treats it as the same person, which is what you want for a returning client calling from their own mobile.

The problem starts when many different people call from the same phone, like a reception desk, an answering service, or a detention center. The agent sees one number, assumes it's one person, and starts merging different callers into a single contact. That's how you end up with the wrong name, the wrong matter, or one person's details attached to another person's call.

The fix is to mark that line as a shared number. Once you do, every call from it is treated as a brand new client, even if the number is identical.

A few common setups trigger this:

In all of these, the caller is different every time even though the number looks the same. Telling Lexidesk the number is shared is what breaks the automatic grouping.

You can do this in two places. Use whichever is in front of you.

Go to Agents, click Configure, then open the Other tab. Scroll to Shared inbound phone numbers.

Enter a Name so you'll recognise the line later (for example "County Jail Main Line" or "Ruby Reception"), enter the full Phone number, and click Add. You can add as many numbers as you need. Your agent keeps its normal memory for every other number, and only treats the ones you list here as shared.

To remove a shared number later, click the trash icon next to it in the list.

If you're looking at a conversation and spot a number that's clearly a shared line, you don't need to dig into settings. Next to the caller's number there's a button to mark it as shared.

Click it, give the line a Name (for example "Jail Main Line"), and click Save. From that point on, every call from that number is tracked as a separate person instead of being grouped into one contact.

Marking a number as shared changes how new calls are handled going forward. Calls that were already merged before you added the number won't un-merge on their own.

This is a separate setting from the shared number itself, and it matters most for answering services and reception relays. When a caller is forwarded to you through a service like Ruby, the number they're "calling from" is the service's number, not theirs. If your agent asks "is the number you're calling from the best number to reach you on", the caller will say yes without realising it's the relay line, and you'll get the wrong callback number on your message.

For any shared line that relays or forwards callers, you can set your agent to ask each caller for their own phone number directly instead. If you're not sure how to change that, email [email protected] and we'll adjust the wording for you.

Add Anonymous as a shared number. In Agents > Configure > Other, under Shared inbound phone numbers, type "Anonymous" in the Phone number field and click Add. Blocked and withheld callers all arrive without a visible number, so this tells the agent to treat each of them as a separate new client instead of merging them.

You can add as many shared numbers as you need. There's no limit, so list every reception line, answering service, facility number, and the Anonymous entry if it applies to your firm.

No, it only affects the specific numbers you add to the shared list. Every other number keeps its normal memory, so a returning client calling from their own mobile is still recognised as the same person.

There's no difference in the result. Adding the number under Agents > Configure > Other and marking it from a conversation both do the same thing. Use settings when you're setting up several lines at once, and use the conversation button when you spot a shared line in the moment.