Electronic Telephone Greetings

Personally Collin, I would prefer to be told my call would be received in the order it was received.

I especially like it when the message add on, "you call will be answered in approximately (fill in the blank) minutes. I'll even stay on the line if it says a long number of minutes, because I can plan my hold time accordingly. I'd think "ok, I have time to answer this email, think about this problem, and work on this..."

Saying a rep will be with you as soon as possible sounds too vague to me. It the type of thing that makes me think I'm going to be holding forever.
At least promising they will answer your call in order implies to me that you know you are a business, and are moving things along.

Now that you mention it, "Saying a rep will be with you as soon as possible sounds too vague to me." doesn't sound good at all. Kind of like "Your call is important to us" which tells us why we are on hold.

Even more annoying are the messages that loop around every few minutes. You hear a click and think maybe you're going to get someone, then you hear "your call is very important to us...."

However, what really makes me throws me into outermost circle of the 7th circle of hell is when you finally get through to someone, who is working at an overseas call center.
Every 15 seconds while looking something up, they have to announce to you how much they appreciate your patience while they bring up your account. Everything they ask you is prefaced by long statements to let you know that in a few moments they are actually going to ask you something that will get you a millemeter closer to having something actually done.

Ms. Chai, I would be happy to look up that information for you, however, before I can do that I would like to ask your permission to verify some information so that we can confirm this is your account. It will just take a few moments to ask you this information, so if you don't mind, I'd like to now get your permission to ask these questions. Is this acceptable to you?

Yes.

Thank you very much Ms. Chai. Now first could you please confirm blah blah blah.

cassius clay .

Thank you Ms. Chai, that is the information that is on your account. Now I would like to confirm blah blah blah

Very funny, and so true.