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When Norm Black – founder of online adventure deals company Trip A Deal - made an appearance during the Salesforce.com at CeBIT keynote, little did he know how fast and how direct would be the impact on his business.

 

 

“We had an immediate spike in traffic to the site, which doesn’t ever hurt an online business,” he says, explaining that all he needed to do was to make one quick phone call to the tech team back in Byron to “turn up the juice” on Salesforce Heroku – the platform on which tripadeal.com.au is built. The extra load was handled with ease.

 

In fact, since filming his original video interview with us in January 2013 traffic to Trip A Deal has increased an incredible 500%, through a combination of word-of-mouth, repeat customers, an increase in affiliate support and a better service experience for customers in Salesforce Desk.com.

Riding high on its success, Trip a Deal has added service personnel since supercharging customer service experience in Desk.com last year; “The best part about this is that each extra staff member directly translates into extra business so the costs of growth are managed proportionately,” he explains.

But, by far the most significant change for the growing travel business is that it has been able to increase the average spend of customers quite significantly. “Where we once specialised in unique activities in the $100 - $300 price range we now find we are predominantly selling five-to-ten-day all-inclusive ‘activity plus accommodation’ packages in the $1,000 to $2,000 range, like spa retreats.

Our average spend has increased five-fold in parallel to our traffic increase. A double win, so to speak

Black’s enthusiasm for wall-to-wall cloud services as a business growth accelerator is unreserved. Speaking of Trip A Deal’s Heroku plus Desk.com winning combination: “There is no better testimonial for it other than - IT WORKS and our business is growing because of it.” 

 

Make sure you watch Norm’s interview with Peter Coffee at Salesforce.com at CeBIT for more