Grand Central Review

I got turned on to Grand Central by Tim Ferris and his 4 Hour Work Week blog. He saw it as a good productivity tool and a nice way of screening calls- allowing you to only take calls that are important and urgent. I love trying new tech things, so I quickly signed up for the beta. It didn't hurt either that Google recently bought Grand Central. If Google thinks it's cool, I'll give it a try. Google does just about everything right.
I've now been using GC for the last couple months. Any time someone or "something" asks for my phone number, I give out my GC line. When someone calls in, they're greeted and asked to state their name while the Grand Central customer is contacted. Then, when I pick up the call, I first get a message from GC saying that so and so is calling and I get three options: answer the call, send it to voice mail, or and probably the coolest feature, I can send it to voice mail and listen in on the message- if it is urgent, I can interrupt the message and talk to them. It's kind of a shocker for some people the first time. One thing I would like to see, is the ability to customize the greeting when people call. Sometimes I think people don't know what to make of the initial greeting, as it doesn't mention my name at all- sometimes they don't know if they called the right number. It'd be great if I could have a nice sweet female voice to annouce my name and then ask for theirs while she attempts to reach me.
It also has some other interesting features. One unique feature that I've enjoyed is the ability to create personalized voice mail messages for each person in my contact list. ie. " Hey John, sorry I couldn't answer. I'll call you back shortly." I think it's a nice touch. As an entrepreneur, any time I can differentiate myself, it's a good thing. The custom voice message is neat.
GC also allows me to customize which phones ring when certain people call. ie, when my wife calls, I can have both my office phone and my cell phone ring. I can also load my client list in the contact manager and have VIP clients not just go to the office phone, but also ring my cell phone to make it easier for them to contact me.
There's a handful of other novel features, but overall, those are the ones I find most useful. Will I keep using GrandCentral? Absolutely. I'm a bit curious to find out what it's going to cost when it comes out of beta, but as long as it's reasonable, I'll probably stick with it. At least until the next cool beta comes along :)
http://www.grandcentral.com/