Why more small businesses are using (social) CRM systems to serve customers

For a few years now 'social media' has been growing in popularity, but 2011 was a breakthrough year for the concept. Online communication, collaboration, and empowerment is now everywhere and it's not just celebrities like Steven Fry and Russell Brand who're using platforms like Twitter to broadcast their experiences.

Last year, the 'layman' finally started using social media platforms with less embarrassment and confuzzlement. In 2011, more than 200 million tweets were sent per day - up from a mere 400,000 per quarter in 2007 - and many of these tweets described everyday customer experiences rather than outlandish celebrity esoterica.

'Revolution' is arguably too strong a word to describe what's happening, but then much of the civil unrest that was experienced in the UK and across the globe is reflective of the layer of empowerment that social media has placed above our everyday lives.

Slightly more benignly, this dialogue now needs to be understood by small businesses as well as despots: increasingly, the companies that are succeeding are those that are managing to understand and communicate with customers, and connect with their increasing propensity to research and communicate online.

CRM is one of the key ways that companies can do this. Previously a buzzword, due to technological limitations, CRM is a relatively broad term that describes how companies can organise and arrange their client and customer communication, and organise new sales prospects using specialist software.

Good examples of CRM software are the small-business-focused Workbooks, which offer tips on consolidating the important communication and sales functions of a small business in one place, and the increasingly popular Salesforce, which is specifically focused on streamlining and improving the sales function of small and large businesses.

These web-based CRM software systems may be doing a good job now but they're having to quickly react to accommodate the changing dialogue of customers: many CRM systems, such as Microsoft CRM, are now integrating social media platforms, such as Twitter, into their interfaces. In the reverse, companies such as Followbase are creating feature-rich CRM apps based on social media platforms.

This integration trend is set to continue into 2012 and has even lead to a new term to describe the hybridisation of social media and CRM: 'Social CRM', unimaginatively.

Things don't always go smoothly though and small businesses need to learn from the success and failings of the intrepid attempts of the past; the detritus of several disastrous and/or notable examples of small businesses attempting (and failing) at interaction using CRM and social media was peppered throughout last year's social media landscape.

One particularly humorous example involved a surrogate Shipphams Fish Paste Twitter account being opened by someone claiming to be a social media intern, with the subsequently bizarre, clueless, and perfunctorarily inept stream of customer updates - such as 'Why not celebrate a promotion or new baby with our gourmet spreads' - capturing the imagination of nearly 8,000 followers, and leading to a Guardian interview with the main protaganist.

Ironically, this demonstrates that sometimes it's not the most obvious CRM strategies that are effective.