As a teenager, Karen Caplan and her sister Jackie learned about customer service the old-fashioned way. They spent weekends in the offices of Frieda's, their mother's specialty produce business, answering customer inquiries and sending recipes on how to prepare the company's exotic fruits and vegetables. Frieda Caplan had encouraged shoppers to ask questions and request free recipes at a time when no one else was doing it.

Nearly three decades later, Karen Caplan, now president and CEO of the Los Alamitos, Calif., company, and VP Jackie Caplan Wiggins continue to set trends in customer satisfaction.

Frieda's, which last year did $35 million in business selling everything from sweet dumpling squash to morel mushrooms, is the nation's largest wholesaler of specialty produce, exotic fruits and other foods. And it has honed customer satisfaction and education to a fine art. At a time when analysts and customers lament often slow corporate responses to consumer e-mails, Frieda's fields up to 500 queries week (most of them e-mails), typically replying within a day of receipt. And while other companies have been criticized for "dumb sizing" -- downsizing without regard to customer service or product quality - Frieda's continues to focus on making customers happy. It's a strategy that has helped build customer loyalty and push revenues higher each year in recent times.

"Twenty-eight years ago, no one was doing customer service. If you wanted a recipe or a refund, they'd tell you to expect to wait six to eight weeks," says Karen Caplan, whose company was also the first in the specialty-produce industry to offer full retail refunds to unhappy customers, and within a week. "Today, I'm relentless about customer service."

Give Customers More Than They Expect
Frieda's was among the first to include product descriptions, usage, handling tips, country of origin, complete nutritional information on its labels. And if that weren't enough, Frieda's assigns three customer service employees to answer the dozens of questions that arrive daily, such as:

"Can I freeze my yakisoba noodles?"

"What's the best way to store horseradish?"

"Can I grow elephant garlic from the bulb I bought?"

Other customers simply want a recipe for the dried chipotle peppers they purchased, or have an occasional gripe, says director of communications Tristan Millar, who oversees customer satisfaction. The company lists recipes and product tips on all its labels, as well as its phone number, address and e-mail address, urging buyers to request refunds if unhappy.

Giving consumers a quick turnaround is the key to keeping them happy. Even on weekends, Millar checks her e-mail for customer queries. And the staff is especially diligent before Thanksgiving, because they know buyers will want tips on how to make the most of their holiday produce. Indeed, it's an attitude more companies should adopt, says a study by Jupiter Communications, which says 46 percent of online businesses take five or more days to respond to e-mails, or don't respond at all, collectively losing millions of dollars. Many sites don't bother to list a customer service e-mail address.

To ease the job, Frieda's has set up its own resource library containing books and publications on just about every fruit, vegetable and exotic food the company could find. So when an e-mail asks about unusual uses of various melons, dried fruits or other products, customer service employees can find a solution and fire off a quick answer. They then stash the information in a special binder, because inevitably, someone else will ask the same question.

How can a company of 160 customer service employees that sells its products to retail grocery chains afford to lavish such attention on individual consumers?

Over the past five years, the privately held company's revenue has grown from about $23 million to $35 million annually. It's difficult to peg how much customer service has played in the growth. But Caplan says that Frieda's refund policy -- unique within the produce industry -- says it all.

"In the past year I can tell you we've refunded less than $1,000, which tells you something about our quality," she says. To keep customers happy and complaints low, the company spends about $200,000 each year in customer service employee time to field consumer requests. The results easily justify the expense, says Caplan, who believes the outreach helps build relationships and trust with end users.

"We have some customers who send the refund checks back to us," says Caplan. "Many have been customers for years and feel they have a relationship with our company. They just wanted to let us know that maybe some items were stuck together in the package."

Pick Customer service employees Ripe for the job
The focus on customer satisfaction begins with the company's culture. Caplan and her clan pick customer service employees with the same care it might select a good pepino melon.

"Make sure the people who are dealing with your customers are passionate about the product. Before they're hired, they have to give us the impression of being very customer- service oriented. You can't come in with a clerical mentality," she says. "They have to show a passion for food or customer service."

Frieda's builds on that natural interest by immersing customer service employees in lore about the 500 specialty products it sells. Workers spend the first weeks of employment learning about products in the company's 81,000-square-foot warehouse in the Los Angeles suburb. They are encouraged to take products home and use them in their own cooking and recipes.

Training and education are the key to sparking workers' passion, Caplan says. Many companies are reluctant to shell out for such training, but it has been well worth it for Frieda's. "Some things you have to do on blind faith, just knowing that you're doing something positive for (customer service employees) and they will do something positive for someone else," she says.