One of the biggest hurdles in my business so far has been effective communication - keeping clients updated, returning calls and emails promptly and just ensuring my valued partners know I haven't died or dropped off the face of the earth.  When you're deep into an exciting new website design, sometimes you look up and realize it's three days later...2:00am....and you forgot to eat again.

As a person who balances analytical and creative skills daily, I've often found communicating effectively difficult.  There have been times where my communication has been excellent (several calls and emails per day) and my turnaround time stellar (same day results) with a brand new client yet they've expressed disfavor due to some unexpressed need.

Expectations on both sides of any partnership need to be stated clearly.  An example is Tim's article over at Active rain on Humble Pie - How to lose a customer(s) forever . It's a good read, please check it out.  Basically, Tim had a difficult customer who yanked business away nearly immediately simply because Tim's staff failed to reply to the customer's initial email.  Now, like Tim - one's initial reaction would probably be to get a bit upset, but he makes an excellent point.  The realization that despite striving to please everyone, it is still impossible to please everyone.

What's key is the continued striving to please as many as you possibly can.  So, my clients know that once and awhile I seemingly disappear - but I keep striving to keep them in the loop despite my instinctual need to keep silent until I actually have some fantastic result to toot about - and enlist other means to help them keep up with me such as my webcam , Meebo widget on my website for instant chat and my new Twitter update where I can give a quick heads up by phone, email, browser about what I'm working on throughout the day.