Many many moons ago I worked at a call center providing email support for a popular VR company. We'd just released the first version of a standalone headset that didn't need to be connected to a PC.

Our site was email and chat support only. Phone support cost a metric buttload of extra money the client wasn't willing to shell out, so we were very locked into our role. Phone calls are a no-no.

We had one very determined, difficult, and technically dis-inclined user just could not figure out our email and chat system.

She would chat in, disconnect herself, and then start a new chat immediately. She sent in email after email, but she could never seem to figure out which of our emails to respond to, or how to keep a chat session open.

Over the span of three days, we received 115 tickets from her (one ticket per chat, or email) and she only managed to respond to one email:

"Please call me this is for my son 555-123-4567"

As much as I hate talking to people, I hate closing 115 tickets by hand (we weren't allowed to use the bulk operations in ZenDesk...), so I work my way up the chain asking my boss, operations manager, and site director if we can just call this lady.

Boss: No. Client doesn't pay us for phone calls, and your utilization is only at 79% get back to work fuckface.

Operations Manager: No. Client doesn't pay us for phone calls and we don't want to devalue our labour by providing a paid service for free.

Site Director: Love the attitude! Synergistic thinking! Really outside the box! No.

Me: Pretty please?

Site Director: (big sigh) Okay, let me make some calls.

So they call the client, who LOVES the idea and approves it as a one off, and we borrow a phone from another contract so I can make the call.

So I call this lady with the phone number she gave us, and she was the sweetest grandmotherly type you'll ever meet.

It was an awkward call (email support means a quiet floor - my coworkers could hear every dumb thing I said) but it was worth it!

She told me that her son is heavily autistic and he's almost entirely non-verbal. But she told me that he thrived in VR - he could actually look people in the "eye". She bought a headset because she wanted to spend time with her son in an environment where he felt comfortable and she was DETERMINED to get her headset working. She hates technology, but she loves her son more. How do you say no to that?

We spent a full two hours on the phone just explaining the basics - how to turn on the headset, how to put it on comfortably without slipping, how to buy an app, how to connect to the internet, how to add a friend, how to invite each other to a game, how to tell which games support multiplayer, how to reset your password when you forget it for the fourth time on our phone call... and while we were at it we went over how to reply to an email and keep a frickin' chat session open

She asked me to pause many times so she could write out notes. She got up to six pages of notes by the time we were done. We ended our troubleshooting with her sending her son a friend request.

She asked me my name, and I gave her my support alias: "Bartholomew" (from the Bandy Papers by Donald Jack - good book series!)

She says to me "You're my guardian angel, Bartholomew. When you're in Montana you look me up, okay? Save my phone number, I mean it. You've always got a place here."

I didn't save her phone number, and she never created another ticket. It's been five years and I still think about her often. We'll never meet again and I'll never know how it all played out, but I hope with all my heart that her and her son are still hanging out in VR.
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(Three months later the client requested we start offering phone support too, which my coworkers absolutely loved and didn't blame me for at all)