A company with call centers all over America had an 80 percent attrition rate. New hires would frequently not show up on the first day. Many that did would train for a week, then quit. The company, which asked not to be identified to protect information about its “areas of pain” from its competitors, experimented with putting customer service representatives on the phone the first day but found they weren’t adequately prepared.

Looking for a method to train people quickly, the company hired Schaumburg-based Resource Bridge LLC, a developer of custom eLearning training products.

Kerry Kalous, who has a degree in computer science and was a founding member of the training services practice areas for Technology Service Corp. and Revere Group Ltd., founded Resource Bridge in 1999.

Resource Bridge’s adult instructional design specialists determined the call center trainees did not have highly developed learning skills.

Its solution was to design an interface with a video game feel.

“What we try to do is reach all three learning styles: kinesthetic, auditory and visual,” Kalous said. “This group learns best by being entertained. If you can engage them, they learn.”

One module of the course addresses how to balance courtesy with professionalism. The user watches as three animated representatives answer a call from a customer asking how to check her voice mailbox. The first rep answers the question in a stiff, technical way. The second sounds relaxed and uses everyday language. The last representative casually addresses the caller as “hon.”

“At this point most of our competitors would let you select your answer, and say ‘yes, that’s right,’ or ‘no, that’s wrong,’” Kalous said. “That’s not real helpful because we need to give you a realistic scenario. You need to see what the customer’s going to do if you answer him that way.”

Most of the trainees choose the last representative, the very casual one, but the caller responds to him with annoyance. The feedback is an entertaining way to learn “soft skills” such as professionalism, said Kalous.

Haemonetics Corp., a Braintree, Mass. company that creates blood collection technology, has also used Resource Bridge to develop training.

“We were pleased with their capacities, curriculum design, capabilities, with their animation and online training knowledge,” Pat Brigham, manager of education, said.

Islandia, N.Y.-based CA, Inc., formerly Computer Associates International, one of the world’s largest software companies, has worked with Resource Bridge for more than three years to develop computer training, primarily for CA’s sales force.

“Our goal was to allow people to take courses … at night, on the weekends, in a hotel room,” Nancy Newfield, director of CA University, said. “It gives them more control over their own training.”

Newfield said since CA started creating courses, more than 56,000 have been taken by its employees.

“The average global sales employee took eight courses,” she said. “They’re taking what they need.”

Newfield said Resource Bridge has helped CA reduce training costs.

“eLearning is far less expensive than bringing people into a center, and taking them out of the center,” she said. “The cost per student for the courses is only about three or four dollars. It’s a very cost-effective way of training a lot of people.”

Resource Bridge eschews juggling many customers at once, instead working with as few as one customer and as many as ten at a time. An hour’s worth of content takes four to six weeks to develop.

“We are not throwing out a wide net and hoping to bring in whatever easy jobs there are,” Kalous said. “We look for long-term relationships. So our customers, every single one of our customers, have used us more than once.”