A staff member at a nonprofit receives an error when merging three duplicate contacts. What should the consultant recommend?

The recommended approach for resolving the error encountered by the staff member during the merge of three duplicate contacts is to create a Permission Set that grants "Modify All" access on Contacts and Accounts and assign it to the staff member. This access provides the necessary permissions to make changes across all contact records, addressing the issue of insufficient access rights that may prevent the staff member from successfully merging more than two contacts at a time.

When a staff member encounters issues while attempting to merge contacts, particularly when dealing with multiple records, it is frequently due to the limitations of their current permissions. By creating a Permission Set with the appropriate "Modify All" access, the consultant ensures that the staff member has the required level of authority to perform merges on all selected records without encountering additional restrictions.

While merging only two contacts at a time or using the View Duplicates component might be workarounds, they do not resolve the fundamental issue of access permissions. Making the staff member a system admin is excessive and could inadvertently provide them with too many capabilities beyond what is required for their role. Therefore, the creation of a specialized Permission Set is the most effective and secure solution.