A System Architecture for Integrating User Activities in Social Networks with Customer Relationship Management

Companies have long recognised that their participation in social networks is expected by existing and new potential customers, who request support, provide feedback to products they own, post complaints and exchange views about the company, for example. Information systems are required for identifying relevant user activities that must be dealt with in a given time. Therefore, existing social media tools provide analytical functions. The integration of these tools and/or social networks directly with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, however, is still sparse. We propose a system architecture for integrating user activities in social networks with CRM, which describes eight subsystems and serves as a construction plan to implement an integration software. The research follows the process of a design science research and includes proposed components of related system models from existing literature. Parts of the architecture have been evaluated in the context of a software-prototype that creates opportunity-tickets based on new posts, and thereby triggers the lead management process of a consulting company.