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Clients and customers are two terms often used interchangeably. Although they’re related, they’re distinct based on what you’re selling—a product or a service. Knowing the differences between clients and customers can help you customize your strategies and provide an appropriate standard of service to each group.
Here, we’ll differentiate clients and customers and discuss how to acquire and retain them for the growth of your business.
Client vs customer: Key definitions
Clients are individuals or entities that engage with businesses to receive professional services or advice. They often have long-term relationships with companies that build trust over time.
Clients usually receive personalized solutions and dedicated support.
Examples of client services
- Professional consulting and advice in areas such as management.
- Legal services and guidance for individuals or companies.
- Financial services like accounting or tax preparation.
- Health care services like patient care and medical consultations.
- IT support, technical assistance, and software development based on client needs.
- Marketing services and promotion management.
Conversely, customers are individuals who have occasional interaction with a business. They are often referred to as buyers, consumers, or purchasers.
While some customers and clients may have ongoing relationships with businesses, such as loyalty program members or repeat clients, many customer interactions often consist of a series of distinct transactions rather than a continuous, unbroken relationship.
These short-term relationships involve a customer entering a store or making an online purchase, completing the transaction, and potentially leaving without further immediate engagement.
Examples of customer service
- Restaurants
- Retail stores
- Supermarkets
- Groceries
- Online retailers
Differences between clients and customers
The terms “client” and “customer” vary in regard to different business aspects.
The distinctions between customers vs clients include:
Nature of engagement
Customer engagement involves short-term interactions that are based on transactions.
Clients focus on long-term relationships, personalized services, and continuous communication.
Business management
Client-centered businesses have dedicated managers to give personalized attention and guide each individual client throughout the customer journey. Customer-based businesses do not have dedicated managers. Instead, all their interactions are managed by support agents.
Customer acquisition
Businesses acquire customers based on marketing and advertising strategies that increase brand awareness, like commercials or social media ads. These tactics are costly and make customer acquisition more expensive.
Conversely, client acquisition involves simple approaches such as referrals, high-quality services, and networking, which are cheaper.
Formal business agreements
Customers do not need any formal agreement between them and the seller.
On the other hand, clients engage in long-term relationships that involve formal agreements that include:
- Summary of the agreement
- Terms of service
- Performance measurement
- Consequences
- Review and termination
Lifetime value
Clients are long-term customers who develop a relationship with your brand and help support your long-term profits.
On the other hand, the more customers you have, the higher the transactions and profit in the short run.
Revenue model
Client-based businesses generate high revenue and include a monthly billing program, which is essential for sustaining the business over time.
Customer businesses are huge and have low transaction value, and payments are made once products are bought.
Your business needs customers to survive well; you need to focus on attracting more customers.
The table below summarizes the differences between client vs customer meanings.
| Criteria | Client | Customer |
| Nature of engagement | Continuous relationship | Transactional relationship |
| Business management | Dedicated managers | Support agents |
| Customer acquisition | Simple referral approaches | Costly marketing strategies like social media ads |
| Formal business agreements | Require formal agreements | Does not need formal agreements |
| Lifetime value | Long-term impact | Short-term impact |
| Revenue model | Monthly billing with high revenue | Single payments with low revenue |
Importance of understanding the difference between clients vs customers
Understanding the distinctions between customers vs clients enables businesses to develop effective strategies to attract, retain, and satisfy them.
The following are other benefits you stand to gain from having client vs customer knowledge.
Builds stronger relationships
Clients require more personalized attention and support than customers.
Businesses can invest in comprehensive support, consistent communication, and a customized solution to foster long-term relationships.
On the other hand, focus on product promotions, effective sales processes to acquire more customers, enhance seamless purchase experience, and guide them throughout their journeys.
Optimizes resource allocation
Clients have a long-term relationship with businesses and generate high revenue.
This enables businesses to allocate more resources to clients due to their continuous relationship, building a loyal customer base as opposed to customers’ time-to-time interaction.
Prioritize efficient customer service to maintain satisfaction and encourage repeat purchases.
Enhances customer satisfaction
Knowing the difference between customers and clients enables businesses to align interactions and services and exceed expectations to build loyalty.
Offer excellent customer service, resolve customer issues, and offer timely support to enhance the customer experience.
Develops effective pricing strategies
Consider pricing models that are best suited for customers vs clients. Since clients are offered special services like enhanced personalization and exclusive customer support, businesses may charge premium rates for these services.
Businesses can set affordable, competitive pricing to attract customers and maximize sales.
Effortlessly manage clients and customers with BoldDesk®
Modern software allows you to maintain relationships with customers vs clients effectively.
The software you use should enable your team to collaborate in real time, automate repetitive tasks, and generate reports.
BoldDesk is the best cloud-based software for your business if you’re looking to manage customer support issues.
The following are some of the features that make BoldDesk stand out in supporting clients vs customers:
Robust helpdesk software
The BoldDesk helpdesk tool helps businesses handle support tickets and improve performance. With the help of analytics, you can achieve efficient customer service.
As a ticket management system, it streamlines the support processes by allowing you to manage client and customer inquiries.
Contact management
The BoldDesk contact management system allows you to organize and maintain contacts and contact groups—along with their associated information.
Purchase history, customer conversations, and logs are held in a centralized, secure location. This enables agents to retrieve up-to-date client and customer information for more personalized service.
Integration options
BoldDesk allows you to integrate many of your currently used apps. These integrations empower your team to create and maintain relationships with clients and customers from a unified platform.
For example, you can:
- Integrate BoldDesk with MailChimp to send marketing email campaigns to clients and customers for lead generation.
- Make calls to customers and clients, transfer calls, and organize and monitor conversations directly within BoldDesk with Ringover.
Automation capabilities
BoldDesk has automation tools that take various ticket actions off your plate, guaranteeing faster resolution and ensuring no support request ever goes unnoticed.
You can also automate the following workflows for more efficient customer vs client support operations:
- Ticket routing
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Ticket status
- Service level agreement (SLA) triggers and reminders
- Alerts and notifications
Reporting and analytics
BoldDesk provides insightful data through built-in reporting and analytics dashboards. Managers can use the reports to assess support ticket volume, SLA reports, and customer vs client satisfaction, among others.
Here are the types of reports and dashboards available in BoldDesk:
- Support traffic dashboard: Monitor the inflow of support tickets.
- Support monitoring dashboard: Track and analyze the status of tickets.
- Satisfaction survey report: Track response ratings as customers submit them.
- Worklog report: Log each agent’s total time spent on each ticket.
- SLA dashboard: Examine insights into how a team meets SLA policies.
- Agent performance dashboard: Analyze the performance of your agents and groups.
Client vs customer: Master the difference
Both clients and customers play vital roles in business success, but it’s important to note that they have diverse needs. Acquiring and retaining customers vs clients require different strategies, too.
Acquiring customers speeds up your short-term success. Customers that you retain and build an ongoing relationship with can be considered clients, which fuels long-term business growth.
Retaining clients and customers can help you build an ongoing interaction that fuels long-term business growth.
With BoldDesk, you can master the differences between customers and clients and build up your business’s reputation.
Contact us to learn how BoldDesk can help you manage your client and customer base for short-term and long-term business growth.
Book a 30-minute live demo and explore the features BoldDesk has to offer. Start a 15-day free trial to learn how these features can work for your business.
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