Method and apparatus for recommending topic-cohesive and interactive implicit communities in social customer relationship management

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of instructions, the plurality of instructions including instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations for recommending a topic-cohesive and interactive implicit community, the operations comprising:

• receiving a request for customer care;
• selecting an implicit community identified from a plurality of individual users of a social media website based upon a relevance score related to a topic of the request for customer care;
• and
• recommending the implicit community in response to the request for customer care.

A method for recommending a topic-cohesive and interactive implicit community, comprising:

• receiving a request for customer care from a customer, wherein the request comprises a problem topic;
• calculating a relevance score as a function of the problem topic for each one of a plurality of implicit communities identified from a plurality of individual users of a social media website based upon a respective topic for each one of the plurality of implicit communities identified using a combined community and user topic generative model;
• calculating an influence factor for each one of the plurality of implicit communities, wherein the influence factor is a function of a number of interactions of the customer from each member of a respective one of the plurality of implicit communities;
• selecting a implicit community from the plurality of implicit communities having a highest relevance score and a highest influence factor;
• and
• recommending the implicit community to the customer.