At SEW, Nacho started a thread on the subject of questions clients of SEOs whould expect to get from the companies they hire. Discussion follows and digresses into the subjects of whether to take on clients with great rigidity in their RFPs or demands. Ian Mcanerin in particular had this to say:

There has to be a happy medium where the SEO can spend time actually doing SEO rather than justifying their existence, and where the client doesn't feel like they are joining some super exclusive organization and are required to get security clearance just to market a website.

Clearly, relations between companies in this field have a long way to go, and especially considering the independence that most SEOs have and can obtain on their own, it will be a long road ahead to developing the type of client-customer operations we're hoping for.