Described herein are systems and methods for creating and using Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks (CRNNs) for small-footprint keyword spotting (KWS) systems. Inspired by the large-scale state-of-the-art speech recognition systems, in embodiments, the strengths of convolutional layers to utilize the structure in the data in time and frequency domains are combined with recurrent layers to utilize context for the entire processed frame. The effect of architecture parameters were examined to determine preferred model embodiments given the performance versus model size tradeoff. Various training strategies are provided to improve performance. In embodiments, using only ˜230 k parameters and yielding acceptably low latency, a CRNN model embodiment demonstrated high accuracy and robust performance in a wide range of environments.