In today’s day and age, with the advancement in the business and service industry, people similarly use clients and customers. Although they have come to mean the same in colloquial terms, there is quite a difference between them.
Key Takeaways
- A client is a person or organization that receives professional services or advice from a company or individual. At the same time, a customer is a person who purchases goods or services from a company.
- Clients have an ongoing relationship with a business or professional, while customers may have a one-time transactional relationship.
- Client relationships are more personalized and require more trust and confidentiality than customer relationships.
Client vs Customer
A client is a person or organization that engages the services of another person or organization, for ongoing or specialized work, having a longer-term relationship with the service provider. A customer is a person who purchases goods or services from a business, receiving more input services.
A client has relations with an enterprise for extended periods, whereas a customer always has short relations as they last only until their purchase. The client is a more formal term for a customer in a business setting.
Comparison Table
| Parameter of Comparison | Client | Customer |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A client is a person that looks for professional services and advice from a business professional or organization. | A customer is a person that buys goods from a shop, store, or organization. |
| Requirement | Professional advice and guidance. | Purchase of required goods. |
| The time frame of relation with the organization | Long | Short |
| Formal agreements | Yes, e.g., deadlines, expected results, responsibilities, etc. | No, a one-time purchase needs no agreement. |
| Relation | A strong professional bond to meet expected results | None |
| Attention | More attention is given as it’s a long-term professional relationship. | Less attention is given as no professional relationship is sought. |
Who is a Client?
A client pays for the services and advice of a professional or an enterprise. The companies can also be clients of an enterprise or organization.
Clients have a long-term relationship with the seller. This is because they work for a long time together to meet the required and expected result for a mutually agreed goal.
The client agrees with the seller before that mentions the terms and conditions of working, the deadlines, the agenda, the time frame of achieving expected results, etc.
The agreement also has clauses about termination in any specific scenario. This agreement can be used to take legal steps in any case of breach of the contract.
The client receives more attention as their demands exceed a customer’s. The client also works for a long time, bringing in more profit than the customer.
The client meets the seller repeatedly whenever required and asked by the seller. For all these reasons, they are given slightly more attention than the customers.
Service-centric companies focus on the services provided to the clients rather than their goods and products.
An example: is when a person seeks legal advice from a lawyer, he is the lawyer’s client.
Who is a Customer?
Customers buy goods and products from a shop, store, or organization. The customer values the quality of the product they are buying more than the services provided by the company.
The customer has a terse relationship with the seller. The customer has relations only until they are in the store to purchase.
They don’t require any legal agreement with the seller before purchasing.
Their purchase is a one-time thing, and hence the seller doesn’t give them his undivided and undisputed attention.
The sellers often manipulate the customer with flattery because they don’t have a solid professional bond.
The seller isn’t concerned with the expected results of the customers as opposed to with clients. They are more profit-centric.
The seller doesn’t maintain customer relations because the company has many customers.
The loss or gain of a customer doesn’t make much of a difference to the company or the profits made.
The customer has services such as a complaint box and feedback boxes to leave a suggestion for the seller for better services, but the seller isn’t bound legally to act on the same.
An example: a student buying books from a store becomes the customer of the store.
Main Differences Between Credit Clients and Customers
- The client is someone who looks to buy the services and advice of an expert or from an enterprise, whereas the customer is the one who purchases products from a shop, store, or organization.
- The client is in a long-term relationship with the seller as opposed to the short-term relationship of the customer with the seller.
- The client has a legal agreement with the seller to reach mutually agreed goals, whereas the customer doesn’t have a legal agreement with the seller to make a purchase.
- The goals of the client are to provide the proper and authentic advice. In contrast, a customer is sometimes manipulated to purchase with flattery, exaggerating the product’s usefulness.
- A client receives more attention than a customer due to the longevity of their relationship.
- Customer services are more profit-centric than the services and advice provided to a client.
- The customer can access services like feedback forms and suggestions, but the client does not.
- For example, when buying a product, the person becomes a customer, but the shopkeeper is the client of the brand’s franchise whose product he sells.
- https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/article-abstract/39/6/1101/1677129
- https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000183
- https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-19711-001
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Chara Yadav holds MBA in Finance. Her goal is to simplify finance-related topics. She has worked in finance for about 25 years. She has held multiple finance and banking classes for business schools and communities. Read more at her bio page.
