http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/vat_on_services/index_en.htm

Enjoy.

How much does VAT vary across Europe? Quite a lot actually.

Cyprus & Luxembourg have the lowest standard EU VAT rates at 15%

Norway, Denmark & Sweden charge a quite eye watering 25%, with plenty or countries charging 21-23%. Suddenly the UK’s current (hopefully temporary) emergency budget rate of 20% suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.

Switzerland has the lowest standard VAT rate of 8%  in the geography of Europe (but obviously outside EU)

For detailed rates of each country go to: VAT Rates for EU   or Swiss VAT Rates

On 29th & 30th November Goldman Sachs held it’s Private Internet Company Conferencein Las Vegas. The event was essentially a networker for around 40 companies they feel have a good chance of IPO and a guest list of various other influential characters. For an overview of the event go to TechCrunch coverage of A List Of Startups Goldman Sachs Thinks Will Most Likely IPO  . Below is a list of companies who were featured at the event.

Social Media is disintermediating search engines in some areas, forcing search engines to focus on enhancing the use of social media generated signals into their ranking algorithms in order to ensure optimal search results freshness & organic results relevancy, or have older, less relevant results than a social media platform.

Also, simply, isn’t a tinyurl link  sent to 1000 people maybe worth similar or more than an obscure link on a barely maintained blog? Of course this depends on relative ease of spamming and trust factor of the publishers.

Social media platforms are disintermediating search engines for fast-moving viral content, where minutes can be the difference between new and cool or “what….you haven’t you seen Fenton yet”?
Search is an intrinsically pull medium, where  social media is both pull and push.

You cannot effortlessly get a stream of data from a search engine and stay entertained, it needs query after query, click after click. Social media platforms can push endless streams of bite sized consciousness, like a frivolous Bloomberg ticker (unless you’re organising an armed uprising which is no laughing matter). Yet Social Media platforms are still responsive to a query, and whilst search on Twitter and Facebook is very basic, that will only grow in capability.

Why not merge the top 5 search engine results into the social media platform search results.

Ta da…no real need to leave Facebook during The Walking Dead, one search gets your mates ironic comments, a tweeted URL of Zombie Survival techniques and the top 5 search engine results for Zombie.

Twitter & Facebook, G+ allow you to run at the pace of the pack when watching live broadcast programmes & events on TV. A large % of the dual screen population who simultaneously watch TV whilst using a laptop and/or smart phone are using these social platforms much more heavily at TV time than they are using search engines.

And don’t forget that TV viewing is the no.1 way we spend our spare (online revenue generating) time….so if your online property gets disintermediated in this prime time, you have big problems.

Social platforms allow both the ability to communicate, a very human need, whilst simultaneously digesting data. Add to that, TV and print adverts are increasingly directing users to their Facebook page and bang….you’ve skipped the search engine. In this scenario the only online ad opportunity occurs on Facebook or Twitter (or Google+), as you’re no longer navigating as heavily via the search engine.

Imagine watching I’m A Celebrity Get me Out of Here.

Simultaneously researching the contestants via a search engine may yield some results for weeks, months or years old articles on the washed up celebrity du jour yet the same search on Facebook or Twitter, G+ etc will yield comment on what they did 30 seconds ago…and the ability to directly interact with that comment, plus graze on various links hand selected by friends.

Staff at certain search engines are very concerned about Social Media full stop and this TV & Second and Third Screen phenomena is a risk to monitor as it is yet another phenomena that is training people to search on social platforms.

Search Engines cannot be left behind, so maybe they’ve developed their own social platform!

But that’s not enough…search engines will need to have their SERP results as up to date as possible as well. This FORCES search engines to pay greater focus on social signals, fast-moving signals regardless of if they even wanted to. It’s that or be the slow kid, wearing last season’s trainers.

No search engine committed to organising the worlds organisation wants to have search session abandonment to Twitter, Facebook etc because the user couldn’t find the freshest content on their engine.

Therefore as search engines must ensure premium FRESHNESS of their results to protect & evolve their own business, it makes sense that certain aspects of social media are no longer complimentary to SEO, but simply are part of SEO. Also, as social media mentions etc become increasingly a mirror of society, it may be strange to so heavily weight organic search results on web links alone. Should a site with 1000 links but no word of mouth dicussion be in a high organic position?

Social Media doesn’t require SEO to thrive, though the skills that make a good SEO often make a good Social Media person.

In the medium term it’s arguable that the same level of effort spent on optimising social signals will yield greater benefits in SEO than traditional SEO methods alone.

I’m certainly not suggesting the phenomena discussed above will kill search engines, but simply force them to boost the ranking weights of social signals, signals we as marketers need to leverage in their own right as well as for SEO.

Essentially since Social Media signals will become an increasing weighted set of influence factors for organic ranking, every SEO manager will need to factor in how they are going to ensure they have constant strong and frequent social media signal supporting their SEO objectives.

I spend quite a lot of time at London City Airport and like their free Wi-Fi sponsored by Credit Suisse.  Credit Suisse loads a default page about themselves when you login, which would normally be something you close immediately, but their cute image of the Lindt Bear and his pet CEO Ernst Tanner caught my attention and made me smile. Little amusing personal touches things like this makes companies stand out and certainly caught my attention more than the usual picture of business men in hard hats shaking hands.

Lindt Golden Bear with pet CEO

If so…the quick Answer is .. go to: Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. and Opt Out of Behavioral Targeting. This single website covers most digital display networks and many advertisers / publishers. The full list of who your Opt Out may ideally block from targeting you is at Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising.

For the record I’m not opted out, but friends have asked me how they can. For me, the sheer joy of poorly managed retargeting and the benefit of optimised retargeting is reward alone to stay “Opted In??”.

Honesty disclaimer..I work at a organistion that does retargeting (any and all media agencies will) and I have worked on behavioural systems prior,  so I could as easily give you an essay on the benefits of behavioral targeting to advertisers and the public, but for now lets look at where there are some gremlins.

For those of you unsure what I am talking about, Retargeting is  (crudely stated) a cookie based way of following you around the web after you visit a website and showing you adverts on 3rd party websites that should persuade you to come back and buy/sign up/complete one of the advertisers various goals at the original advertisers site that you left so calously.

Retargeting can be used very well and achieve high ROAS, but unless it is frequency capped (i.e. after so many ads shown to you and no click, it goes away) and well optimised to the audience it can be inappropriate or start feeling like stalking.

I have 4 current examples. P&O Ferries have been showing me various ads across the Google Display Network for ages since I visited their website. As it was I took the Eurostar…so I feel a bit guilty but no more likely to travel P&O Ferries.

Next up is Opentag, their advert now turns up everywhere. I need to speak with these guys next week and looked at their site for contact details, now our first topic of conversation will be “nice biscuits, by the way…can you call off your display advertising retargeting hounds. “

SEOmoz (who I love) was next, I didn’t sign up for an account when I visited the site (Because my team already pays for 30 or so SEOmoz accounts). In short, nice robot advert Rand, but you’re literally preaching to the converted….at last count….76 times.

Then we have The Grange Hotel, you didn’t have rooms when I wanted one…but like a blind date that didn’t quite work out…Grange is determined there was some chemistry..really….you’re back time and time and time and time and time and ….time again. ” Grange…I slept with Hilton…. I’m so sorry Grange…but please let me move on…you weren’t there when I needed you, Hilton was.”

Sometimes I even get 2 adverts from The Grange if I’m lucky.

So all in all….I have now seen adverts for 4 advertisers almost constantly for 5 days (to the near exclusion of all other adverts). I know how to turn them off, but like some Stockholm Syndrome sufferer I’m almost feeling like they are my friends…what will happen when my four adverts, for products and services I either have or won’t buy…finally go away. How will I feel?

I may have to edit my cookie settings as I  am not sure I can handle the rejection of the retargeting being cross network frequency capped or maybe..horror…spending all their money on me and running out of budget due to my perhaps misunderstood glances.

If you like to do the dumping first….get yourself to About Ads and Opt Out as you see fit. For me, I may have just one more look at The Onion on Youtube and see if The Grange is there for me…..

Was Sleeping with Hilton a Mistake?

As you browse, more and more categories become associated with your browser, as well as demographic data. This is then used  by the Google Display Network (GDN) formerly known as the Google Content Network to target more specific advertising at you. This targeting includes Retargeting (Re-Targeting) whereby after you leave an advertisers website without fulfilling an advertisers goal, such as booking a hotel room or signing up for their service, that site will more frequently show you adverts to persuade you to come back and fulfil the goal. (Inversely the advertiser can negatively target you (i.e. exclude you) from further advertising if you have demonstrated you are a customer by logging in etc. Some advertisers will do this to save money or not pester you, others will use it to ensure you don’t see special offers aimed at new customers only!

If you want to Opt Out of the Google Display Network profiling you for its advertisers then visit Google Ad Preferences Manager and click Opt Out.

If you want to more fully opt out of most of the other advertising networks Behavioral Targeting systems as well then visit About Ads which will show you all networks storing data on your browser. You may need to run this for each browser you use.

For an example of what Google was storing on my Firefox and IE7 browsers but not Chrome (I don’t use chrome yet) see below. According to Doubleclick’s tracking I’m a hybrid of Sir Alan Sugar and Moss from the IT Crowd. Sadly I don’t own a Rolls Royce (needed a photo of one for a presentation)  so in some cases a single site visit can add a category to your profile yet dozens of visits elsewhere (i.e. outside GDN advertiser sites will not be flagged). Enjoy.

Geeky with taste for travel

The Theme park study is research that found that 1 bad visit to a very well known US company’s theme parks requires 7 positive subsequent visits to restore the customer love and consistently result in positive word of mouth from the customer.

It is implied that companies halt advertising when they have serious customer service problems yet companies have an instinct to go the other way and ramp up marketing spend to talk their way out of their problems. This only brings more of their total available universe of customers in to a negative environment that they will bounce out of and be xx% more expensive to ever acquire again.

We know UK staff have just come through a tough environment which tends to dent morale, a key component of great customer service.

Research my wife did at IAC Interactive Corp years ago showed that 2 negative experiences in less than a year more than quadruples normal abandonment (detailed research I cannot share but it statistically modelled experience to frequency and emotional involvement of customer interaction and the order of the events)…roughly speaking…rude Bentley salesman is dead in water at 1^st move, rude corner shop guy is an allowable inconvenience that should be avoided after 2^nd or 3^rd time.

At 3 or above negative experiences (over say 90 days) it becomes almost impossible to use marketing alone to win the customers goodwill back and even more to get them to be a brand advocate. Both will usually be at a cost that exceeds the customers LTV.

Recently I noticed a slump in UK customer serviced and I like to talk from facts and not opinions so over the last 6 months I have used my old investigative journalism skills to look at some companies I am a regular customer with, and also look at a 10 year old case I was involved with.

***This research is limited to a part time qualitative research, opportunistically asking high gain questions when I have a few minute spare in course of my personal consumer relationship with the company. Case studies drawn from conversations with the staff and management of each company who are often extremely open. No brands stated***

Case 1: The Restaurant that has fast staff running out the door

This large chain of trendy restaurants recently has developed a very high staff turnover, evidenced by stressed looking shift leads hovering behind the tills doing real time training on POS and processes. Too many floaters/floor walkers can be a signal of high staff turnover in a business.

(If you see INS floaters at a US airport immigration point, get a good book out and forget that connection).

The increase in food delivery delays caused by communications errors alone rather than sheer workload is a consultancy touchstone, usually drawing your attention to potential problems in organisations management.

These highlight poor training and team cohesiveness issues and not just, ‘Jeez these guys’ are busy and growing fast.  Cold but seemingly fresh looking food is a signal of poor communications and teamwork in a restaurant as is lots of movement by staff without plates/condiments etc…They are usually doing communication runs.

In this restaurant morale has collapsed at some branches and the trendy reputation is being replaced by word of mouth ‘sweatshop / move on to somewhere that cares’ reputation in staff circles. The loss of unique culture triggered by a management ‘work harder, faster, more more more’ led to some original store managers leaving and now a good willed but inexperienced management is leading many restaurants. The trendy reputation was a rod for their back, attracting great people with high expectations who in themselves were hard to buy back from the edge when the company ‘went corporate’ which is almost inevitable in any company that intends to grow.

Perhaps the tragedy is that throughout the recession they were a very busy and profitable chain benefitting from the downgrade in eating out that increased their average customer visits. However at a guess I imagine someone in the business wanted to feather the bank account for harder times ahead and by doing so risked the business, or they wanted to fund new store openings which are now fast and frequent.

In the case of expansion whist wages are capped, a basic business rule may have been broken.

Don’t spend large amounts of money in a noticeable way whilst staff are on a wage or benefit freeze.

Only CEO’s and CFO’s feel the warm glow of strategic advancement while pay is frozen. The foot soldiers probably didn’t take a pay cut to £1 year like a CEO, but neither will they have been likely to have been coincidentally awarded £6m in stock. They just leave or stay and act up to the point they drown out the diminishing hero staffers that remain. The wheels start falling off.

In this restaurants London branches I’ve now witnessed numerous disappointments at tables near me but few complaints, though the rate is increasing many times faster than their food prices which are at an inflation busting (12% up y/y) on some items. While I’ll tell the manager when I’m not served well, and always ensure I get the food as I like it (and come back), my table buddies often shrug and just don’t come back.  Luckily these restaurants advertising budget is low and customer loyalty unusually strong. Store openings are rapidly increasing at around the same rate as the collapse in customer service culture. This chain will be here to stay, but it is going to get painful soon.

Case 2: The Big Utility who wanted everyone to love them

Management were worried about losing customers to a more nimble competitor and increasing commoditisation of their services. They were experiencing high customer churn due to poor customer service and sluggish customer growth due to slow productisation of their otherwise industry leading innovations. The management went on a kind of ‘love thy customer drive in the way you attempt to buy an upset child’s affections’ drive, This empowered huge swaths of staff to issue credits to complaining customers.

The simplistic manner in which account credits were enabled should have been a red flag from day one.  A senior manager potentially feeling under pressure (and probably months behind due to procrastination/politics) declared “let’s keep this simple so everyone understands and we get fast results”. I imagine this senior type was measured to soft metrics such as brand loyalty or maybe harder metrics such as retention … but not a complex financial scorecard.

The cry of ‘let’s keep this simple’ drowned out any notion of ‘let’s do this right’ or more business speak-phrased ‘ensure effective and efficient management of it’.

Talking to one of the programme leads years later they corrected me and said ‘that’s consultant doublespeak Bill…’effective and efficient..you are repeating yourself’. They probably were still not ready for the lesson in how you can be very efficiently ineffective. But the attitude alone was interesting and belied a righteousness that is remarkable based on what happened next.

Several months after the initiative launch the execs found out that the ‘call centre monkeys’ (one 22 year old managers phrase not mine…I was ex ‘Monkey’ in his language!) had outsmarted them and given away huge sums to boost every possible stat you can imagine a call centre person has. In an environment where you have to put a code in your phone that times how long you are at the toilet, there is no love lost.

In fact the incentives for customers even drove down the quality of retained staff..Imagine you are on your third customer complaint of the week for poor interpersonal skills and about to get a HR visit.

“Err..my managers not in right now but I’ve realised this must be frustrating for you, let me give you £100 off your bill.”

Ta Da..Happy customer who may even write in and say how great you are and get you promoted!

The cat starts buying lives with his owner’s money.

I used to work in a call centre many moons ago, like bars and hairdressers…they are an environment where the underrated and underappreciated can run riot while the spotty faced fast track management stream get eaten alive (and don’t notice the first few hundred gnaw marks).

I once had to fire half a dozen call centre staff in a day for unrelated schemes that a MENSA member would have been hard pressed to think up. (There is a reason very senior call centre managers are rumoured to be paid as much as NHS surgeons)

The simple rules had meant all staff of a certain grade were equally able to dish out cash or credits, irrespective of their personal track record or alignment or knowledge of the way the company measured our strategic goal.

Call centres are often considered cost centres not profit centres and so are measured quantitatively rather than qualitatively. In a world where you don’t feel human relationships with your upper management and the only human connection is at the end of a phone, nice people do favours to nice people.

Long story long…it was a financial disaster.

A year in to the programme someone senior went to spend more time with their family and the pendulum swung. Now you’d be hard pressed to give the customer 50 pence if a company van had just driving through their living room for a laugh. The disproportionate swing saved a fortune, even more than before the ‘buy their love’ campaign. But locally managers lost almost all their discretion as part of an exec culture not to trust the monkeys again.

The best people left and it took years and tens of thousands of customers before a well thought out system, fraud limited and nuanced to customer expectations re-emerged. No one ever admitted the ‘lets rush it and do it simple’ rather than right was the main cause’. The new system for refunds was not simple and required someone who bothered to read the documents and flow charts. By virtue this meant most disputes ended up with someone who had a clue, had professional personality.

As far as I know that system and its creator are still around in the company and the stats look ok.

Apart from the glamour of Oakland,CA (North Silicon Valley…..no…really) the visa application process was hilarious. By the time HR had finished the write-up it literally said ‘Bill will be an asset to US National Security’ (my team used to do stuff like track inappropriate content publishers)

The L1 document was the least British self deprecating process ever. Nothing in my 3 pages of  ’why Bill should be allowed to go to the US’ was anything but true, but it was also like the most positive..caffeine fuelled new manager giving you a staff review during a cross-country run.

Yesterday I had to step into cover a colleague who couldn’t talk at SES. Typically I keep a fairly low profile and and work on technology, human relationship or financial levers to business and stay out the spotlight. Anyhow…at very short notice I had to prep a talk for the UK State of Search industry panel and supply a biog. Quickly  written on blackberry during the fire alarm at Google’s Avinash talk…I sent it off in 90 secs and thought no more of it.

It just appeared in my Google alerts and it was like a flashback to the L1 process..only this time I’d written it and am blushing at the megalomania sound of it. Then I read around for a while on different sites and you’ll notice something about most biogs…how few people talk about their roles as parts in successful teams and focus on a very singular voice of ‘I made xyz’ as if the successful team element dilutes rather boosts their relevance to the world….certainly everyone led and true as it may be, ‘collaborated to achieve’ is less present.

I don’t know about you but it’s harder and harder to strike out alone and deliver something without being part of a team….and it’s great teams that get the results in most of the world I live in. If I could never lead a tech initiative again, but just make teams work consistently excellently I’d be cool with that.

On this point, not progressive enough yet to rework my client pitch bio sheets, but maybe one day I’ll take the leap and say:

‘Was part of a great team. Full Stop. The company did xyz. Full Stop. We learnt xyz. End.

So..time to eat my own 2am love up advice.

Shout out to my old peeps..a truly amazing gang I was honoured to work with and miss everyday…. Gary Chevsky (Engineer 1 and THE man at Ask.com, also my old boss), Steve Orr (still at Ask.com 11 years in and resident genius, 3 way co-parent of Smart Answers), Mike Tierney (All your tech is happens now), Michiel Frishert (we’ll always have maps), Rona ‘eat my TFE mod/ don’t you dare’ Yang, Charlise ’paint my cake, eat my SA’ Tiee, Hope (NY Gentry Dictionary Empress) Hackett, Scott ‘Make Rocket Go’ the Visionmeister Grieder, Mike ’would you like an affiliate ID with that…no..I’ll fire you next time’  Poynter, Vlad ’Ukrainian Matinee Idol’ Sayenko, Vlad my Russian friend and last but in my UK team 1st…Hugh ‘Laughing Lord Lucan’ Poynton. You were it, we was there..and it was a pleasure to do my little bit along side you. All the best to my old Ask.com friends still fighting the good fight. …and maybe one day Ask.com will…..well… youknow.

See you in 51o.  

(Apologies to those I missed out…thing about teams…so damn many people to love)