Got My GrandCentral Number!
Today I received my invitation to sign up for a GrandCentral phone number. GrandCentral is a call management application that Google acquired while it was still in beta for $50M. In previous posts and at events, I’ve discussed the impact of this type of service to the future of online consumer experience and lead generation. I repeatedly receive calls from telemarketers on my mobile, which has two issues:
- Telemarketers are legally not allowed to call mobile phones
- I am on the National and State do not call lists
I receive telemarketing calls from private numbers so I have no way of reporting them. I wish my Blackberry or AT&T would give me control over blocking those types of calls and send a standard message to the other party that they need to call with a public number. My friends can work around that by using *82 before dialing or calling from another number. Telemarketers, however, would have a much more difficult time doing that.
Now the best part… Imagine blocking a known number altogether before it even gets to your phone or actually fake the caller into believing the phone number doesn’t even exist! At the moment, this is what I’m excited about with GrandCentral. Previously I’ve used TossableDigits for various telemarketing experiments and I liked their service. TossableDigits, however, charged me for the service. And, I use GotVoice to archive my voicemails in mp3 format. Now I can just use one service — GOOGLE.
I have a feeling that I will slowly start to move to my GrandCentral number because of the advanced features, to name a few:
- SMS alerts on voicemails
- Centralized voicemail
- Ring multiple phones
- Phone spam protection
- Switching to a different phone in the middle of a call — wha!?
- Recording calls
- Listening in on a caller leaving the message before picking up
Here are some screenshots of the site:
Google, I just love how you know everything about me and now you will know who calls me and how long I talk to people. Is there any other information I can get for you this evening?
I’ll write a review as I start using the service some more. I am able to invite some friends to GrandCentral. If you’d like an invite, drop me an email or a comment.
