I received a phone call from a client today. It had been a while, she said, but she had sent an email a couple days ago and wasn’t sure if my email address had changed since she had not heard from me yet.

I had not seen her message because I was not scheduled to check my email for another couple days, but I pulled up her message and we had a nice discussion about a new project. However, this experience alerted me to the fact that I have no forwarding filters set up for client communication.

This was an oversight, but not a huge one. In fact, this was the first time in 4 months that I received a call from a client regarding an email that they sent. From the start, the idea has been that if someone’s need was urgent enough, they would call me, and that’s exactly what happened.

Nevertheless, I’ve created a forwarding filter so that I will receive messages from clients in my priority email account. In doing this, I feel like I’m “weakening” my shields (from email) by giving preference to clients. Why should they get priority access to my time?

The reason is simple: Service is a top priority (users, clients, etc.). It may be at odds with my mission of minimizing exposure to email, but providing high quality service is something I will not compromise on.

I already have a forwarding filter for support emails from users who use my (free) software, so why should clients get any less? Now they don’t.