A Client is somebody who buys goods or pays for services. Companies and other organizations may also be clients. As opposed to customers, clients usually have an arrangement or a relationship with the seller.
For example, you are a customer if you buy a cup of coffee at a train station from a cafe stall. However, the stall owner is the client of the coffee supplier, especially if there are credit terms.
In other words, the stall owner is a client of the coffee supplier because they have an arrangement.
When paying for physical goods, we use ‘client’ and ‘customer’ interchangeably. Therefore, the stall owner is also the coffee supplier’s customer.
However, only clients pay for the services of a professional. For example, if you pay for the services of a lawyer, you are the client.
Even if you have no business arrangement with the lawyer, you are still the client and not the customer.
Psychologists call the people they treat either clients or patients.
Some linguists say that ‘customers buy something from others’, while ‘clients are under the protection of others.’
However, many examples clash with this explanation. The explanation is true when we look at the treatment of clients and customers. The video at the bottom of this page looks at this difference.
Client-centric companies have their clients as the focus of their attention, rather than the product.
We may refer to people who are receiving something from a government bureau as clients.
Client in computing
In computing, clients are pieces of hardware or software that access a server’s service. The server is usually on a different computer system. In such cases, the client accesses the service through a network. The term applies to the programs’ or devices’ role in the client-server model.
Servers and clients may be computer software run on the same machine and connect via inter-process communication techniques. The servers wait for clients to initiate connections that they may accept.
We first used the term when referring to devices that couldn’t run their stand-alone programs. However, they could interact with remote computers through a network.
Ancient times
In ancient Rome, a client was a plebeian who lived under the patronage of a patrician. A plebeian was a commoner while a patrician was an aristocrat.
In the medieval guild system, a client often sought the services of skilled craftsmen, entering into contractual relationships that sometimes lasted for the duration of large projects.
After the fall of the Roman system, the concept of a client evolved, and in the modern era, it has come to encompass a wide range of professional and commercial relationships based on service provision.
The word ‘client‘ emerged in the English language in the fourteenth century. It came from Anglo-French ‘clyent.’