Title: The design of software-agent architecture for customer relationship management in utility service-based business

Authors: Jing-Jang Hwang; Ta-Tao Chuang; Kazuo Nakatani; Wen-Hung Yeh

Addresses: Department of Information Management, Chang Gung University, 259 Wen-Hwa 1st Road, Kwei-Shan, Tao-Yuan, 333, Taiwan ' School of Business Administration, Gonzaga University, 502 E. Boone Ave., Spokane, WA 99258, USA ' Lutgert College of Business, Florida Gulf Coast University, 10501 FGCU Blvd. So, Fort Myers, FL 33965, USA ' Telecommunication Laboratories, Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., 21-3, Section 1, XìnYì Rd., Jhongjheng District, Taipei, 100, Taiwan

Abstract: A challenge facing businesses establishing an effective customer relationship management (CRM) system is the need for integrating data from different sources. Many data integration approaches have been proposed and widely adopted to improve customer services. However, not all data integration approaches are suitable for utility service-based business due to its unique characteristics. The study explores the idea of using software agents to address the integration issue of building CRM systems for utility service-based businesses. The study proposes two simple agent interaction models, the request-response model and the subscription-publishing model as well as six categories of agents to meet the need. The utility and validity of the proposed approach are examined and verified in a real-world case. They are implemented with extensible markup language (XML) and applied to create an agent-based architecture for a CRM system for a telecommunication company in Taiwan.

Keywords: information integration; customer relationship management; CRM; software agents; utility services; XML; data integration; request-response model; subscription-publishing model; telecommunications industry; Taiwan; multi-agent systems; MAS; agent-based systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2014.063935

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2014 Vol.8 No.3, pp.256 - 277

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article