Engineer_abroad

It implies that their is normally used nomenclature within a given industry, in highly competitive situations using the wrong term could imply you don't know that this is the norm and hence could call your professional abilities into practice. This is actually common within the mining world vs civil engineering world. Both use different terms and using the wrong one could imply you have little to no experience in the client/customers specific field.

R I C H

I'd have thought the details contained within a written proposal/tender, or a face to face discussion about whatever service/contract delivery, says more about competence and experience than the choice of using either word.

Aviator

Nonsense, airline passengers are customers, some airlines call them guests, they are still customers. I feel sure if I called a pax a customer to their face, they would be unlikely to ask for another pilot, switch airlines, or think to themselves, holy crap this guy is in charge of this plane and he called me a customer, he clearly has no idea about the industry or what he is doing.

Being called a guest, or some other dressing for warm and fuzzies I find more off putting than making me feel like something special.

Hookers have clients, but I feel sure they would not lose one or bring their professional standards into question if they called them customers.


It is traditional terminology for different industries, that ultimate all mean the same thing.

Engineer_abroad

Nonsense, the analogy of the airline industry to Engineering consultancy is irrelevant. The fact that the hospitality industry may use guest or customer interchangeably with no impact does not mean the same applies for every industry. In engineering consultancy the accepted terminology is Client, as stated in posts above this is also the legally defined term in contracts used in the industry.

I agree, hookers do have clients, they provide a bespoke professional service. The analogy here is not lost on the engineering world who joke about this connection all the time.

FromUKtoBC

i do use the words interchangeable, however in the business world, we tend to refer to customers as people who are likely to do one-off transactions and clients are those people with 'lifetime value' to the business due to the relationship we have built up with them

i used the word customers loosely here

BristolUK

Funnily enough, passengers of the various rail companies in the UK do actually get quite angry when referred to as customers.

scrubbedexpat091

When Target was in Canada, they used the term guest instead of customers, and boy did that seem to tick off Canadian's. In the US they have used that term for many years as do other companies like Disney.

US airlines for the most part have departed from calling people passengers and use customer now instead. And I think Westjet calls passengers guests.

BristolUK

And then, of course, you get staff and employees called associates.

rivingtonpike

When conducting business in Canada, one rule I have learned is never EVER ask two questions in the same email. You might run the risk that the answer to one of the two questions is "no". Since most Canadians are incapable of saying the word "no", the only response left open to them is to ignore your email entirely - even though the answer to the other question is "yes".

dbd33

To take a crack at the original topic. I provide goods and services to enterprises in Milton Keynes, the City, Glasgow, Edmonton (AB), Toronto, Quebec City as well as in a number of other locations outside the UK and Canada. One, in the US, uses a system of online reverse auctions for all tenders, the others are very similar, differentiated by corporate culture and, to a lesser extent, by industry. If there's something extraordinary about doing business in Canada I haven't noticed it.

MillieF

To diverge, but hopefully only slightly, I have become involved with quite a lot of local initiatives and am therefore refered to as a 'stakeholder'...I am also working for the library service, where all our 'members' are 'patrons'.

Corporate finance terms can be somewhat confusing, I find.

Atlantic Xpat

Quite. I've been sold too in a B2B sense, working in procurement in Canada for over 10 years. I doesn't feel any different from being sold to in the UK.

Vulcanoid

Really? I worked there, and 'Guest' was one of the (few) things I don't remember anyone complaining about. Largely as they seemed used to it, from the American stores (as most of the complaints were about how we were different in products and prices)