Your call is important to us. No really.

Some bananas. Recently.

I made a phone call yesterday to the Eden Project box office to buy some tickets for their excellent Eden Sessions. As is often the way with ticket hotlines, my call was held in a queue. And every so often a voice would cut in.

But unlike the usual "your call is important to us"or some dull, generic sales messages, a Cornish sounding voice cut in and told me that bananas are indeed Britain's favourite fruit. I was taken back by both the accent (not the usual, unspecified region corporate voice) and the message itself.

Next up he explained how indigo dye is in fact yellow until it touches denim at which point it turns blue.

Then... hemp can create four times as much paper per area grown as trees.

And... If you stacked all our annual household waste up it would reach the moon.

By now I was actually looking forward to each new interesting fact, each message interesting and aligned to the Eden Project's values, and had forgotten about being held in a queue until a nice, helpful lady answered my call.

It made me wonder why so few companies use any imagination on their telephone hold systems. After all, it's another customer touch point and an opportunity to reinforce your brand.