As of December 09 online social activity of consumers around the world was at an 82% increase in time spent on social networking from the year prior. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours a day on networks such as Facebook and Twitter. So what does that mean for businesses today? What does it mean when customers continue to adopt social technologies at a blinding speed – yet organizations big and small aren’t able to keep up.

Since rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect with individuals and communities who share mutual interests, organizations are increasingly being left out of the conversation. Simply hiring more people to keep up with social marketing, sales, and support will not be sufficient, as customers and their new channels outnumber employees. As a result, organizations need an organized approach to connect their business to the social web giving them the opportunity to respond in near-real time and in a coordinated fashion.

The relationship between organizations and customers has traditionally been optimized around organizations, not customers. However, the rapid adoption of social networks and online activity has shifted the balance of power to the customer. Companies and organizations have fallen behind in connecting with customers, and realize that they must find a way to at least participate in the conversation. Some still yearn to regain control of the customer relationship.

The reality – this is no longer possible as a few key trends have emerged:

 Customers connect with each other – happily leaving organizations behind.

Customer behavior has changed. Businesses and organizations no longer control the conversations with their customers. In fact, customers and prospects have chosen to engage with organizations on their own terms, for instance in Yahoo! Answers, online communities, and on Twitter because they trust companies less and less. As a growing number of customers choose to connect and collaborate with each other, for instance, in Get Satisfaction, Yelp, and the blogosphere, they’ve discovered that they can enjoy a more accurate, timely, and relevant customer experience without the organizations, disrupting the flow of influence.

 Companies know the problem will get worse before it gets better. Organizations realize they are no longer in charge. They often lack a credible strategy that empowers their employees to catch up with their customers. Although Comcast Cares has over 10 employees responding in social channels, they know they can’t scale in a 1:1 manner. Furthermore, a proliferation of new social networks and mobile tools are appearing at an increased pace – organizations will fall further behind. The result – tremendous amounts of waste in piecemeal data, customer records, APIs, and experiences – leaving companies unable to efficiently reach customers, prospects, and partners.

 Outdated frameworks and pet theories relegate discussions to incremental fixes.

Organizations seek a unified framework from which to build use cases. What’s lacking is a holistic approach to integrating social into CRM and enterprise apps. With technology providers espousing their point of views based on heritage (e.g. support, sales, marketing, and customer experience), and over 15,740 social media self proclaimed experts on Twitter1, confusion abounds in the application of social CRM.

The market seeks actionable frameworks to provide vision, build use cases, create entry points, address change managements, and consider technology requirements. And what’s more, the market seeks relationships. And that’s exactly what they’re getting.