'Hello!'

Once upon a time I had a colleague that consulted me quite often. I didn't mind that - I knew the systems concerned inside out and he was trying to market these things and thus he often asked what was and wasn't possible so it was part of my job to figure out answers to those questions so he could relay them out to customers and hopefully turn them to sales.

Approximately 98% of our phone calls were of this kind, so once I skipped the usual "hello" and answered his call (caller IDs were already the norm here so I knew it's him) with my best impression of friendly and smooth priest voice, saying "[Please] tell me [of] your problems." (I feel like a lot is lost in translation here, original Finnish was simply "Kerro huolesi"; "please" being implied with tone)

Line was quiet for a few seconds and then I could hear him laughing at the other end. My somewhat humoristic opening was received well. I felt though that this was phrase I could use only once so I never did it again, returning to more usual "hellos" and similar greetings.

Even these days I occasionally answer people I know with something less formal. Not something like above, but something else than the usual, somewhat formal answer with when I don't know who's calling. Not to mention something like "Hold on, I'll transfer to accounting" when, really, I just walk over to different computer.

But if you want to answer the office phone with something like this, you'd absolutely, positively need to know that the person at the other end can and will be willing to accept some humor in business setting. Not all people do, and almost no one does unless they have at least of passing knowledge of person answering the phone.

But if you really know that person calling can handle the humor like above - especially if they are a customer instead of colleague - then you're golden. They know that they can rely on you - and you know that you can trust them (well, as much as anyone can trust anyone in this modern dog-eat-dog world...)