Business English Vocabulary - CUSTOMER & CLIENT

Hi, my name is Rebecca and welcome to our short lesson in Business English. A couple

of terms that we're going to clarify today have to do with who buys services, alright,

and what we call that person or those people. So, the words we're talking about today are

customer and client. When do you call someone a customer and when do you call someone a

client, right? So, generally, the description is something like this. A customer is someone

who generally buys products from a shop or a restaurant, right? You can think of food

as a kind of product in a restaurant. So, a restaurant has customers, a shop has customers,

alright? A client, on the other hand, is someone who buys services from a professional person

or a professional organization or company, right? So, examples of professionals who provide

services and examples of professionals who have clients, in effect, are accountants,

lawyers, consultants, right? These are all people who call their customers, not customers,

but clients. The people who purchase services from them or receive services from them are

called clients, alright? And then, just another short little point, nothing to do with customers

or clients. For a teacher, you wouldn't say that a teacher has customers, really. We don't

normally refer to them that way, even if they do pay. We refer to them as students. Similarly,

a doctor doesn't normally refer to the people who come to see him or her as customers or

clients, but rather as patients, alright? That's just a little bit extra in terms of

vocabulary for you. If you'd like to do a little quiz on this or on any other, a variety

of other subjects, actually, to do with English, please visit our website at www.engvid.com.

Alright? Thanks very much. Good luck with your English. Bye for now.