Making the most of personal data

According to PWC's CEO Pulse, two-third of the CEOs surveyed say they are capturing significantly more data from their customers this year compared to last year, thanks to availability of technologies such as mobile devices and cloud computing, which can track transactional, behavioural and consumption patterns. The majority of CEOs say their companies collect personal data at the point of transaction (75 per cent) or via third parties (62 per cent). Only 55 per cent of CEOs collect data via 'social listening'. Of those who do, just 13 per cent have the systems in place to continually conduct social media monitoring, despite the rapidly increasing number of consumers sharing opinions on social media. Knowing how to effectively integrate personal data insights throughout the business is a big challenge for CEOs. At present, personal data is mostly being used to improve customer-facing parts of the business such as customer service - 85 per cent of CEOs always or often use customer data to improve this function, sales (84 per cent) and marketing (81 per cent).

Rising above the debate of how best to apply personal data analysis is the larger issue of how consumers feel about the mining of their thoughts and browsing habits. According to the survey, consumers are quite comfortable with the arrangement with 50 per cent CEOs saying customers are 'significantly' or 'somewhat' more willing to share data than they were 12 months ago.