A CRM-oriented model for evaluating intermediary

Taking full advantage of the intermediaries´ social ties, a firm can improve its performance effectively and specifically. This paper established a social network model to take intermediaries into account for the improvement of CRM. In this model the relation-chain that is composed of staffs, intermediaries, customers and the social ties between them is proposed to represent the business communications from firms to customers, and we further give an algorithm to evaluate the intermediaries´ contribution and importance based on the relation-chain´s structure. Finally the firm can formulate its CRM strategy for the intermediaries depending on the results of the evaluation.