Sometimes you don't have the customer's name, and you need something more formal than hi or hello. Or perhaps you have the customer's name, but you just want to be more formal than hello [name].
That's why we would like to see a message variable for a time of day based greeting - Good morning, [name]. Adding it to a template means when you send a message it takes your time and uses the correct greeting (good morning, good afternoon, good evening).