Is this very specific to the culture? In many cultures, there are standard written greetings that always appear at the start of a letter or even email response.
Recently, I canceled a subscription for a newspaper, they make you go through chat to cancel. The agent was so nice that it was annoying.
I don’t mind waiting in silence, but when they keep asking about weather, vacation plans, etc, I find it hard to not respond. This might part retention technique though.
Outsourced call centers obsessing over dumb metrics like "dead air" and "hold time". They think you are gratified by obsequious groveling and fawning reassurance. There is always some guy in management who gives pep talks about improving outcomes by avoiding words like "can't" or "impossible". He demands improvement to an already satisfactory situation, and so they scramble to out-customer-service themselves.