Clients or Customers?

I have always been averse to the use of the term "clients" in the IT business.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th edn.) gives the first meaning as "a person using the services of a professional person or organization". It gives the meaning of the term in Middle English as "a person under the protection and patronage of another".

Lawyers have clients. Chartered accountants have clients. Bosses of political parties (other than left wingones) have clients.It is a relationship of power to harm. And of course doctors & psychiatrists have the greatest power. They have patients. And gurus have chelas.

Lawyers, CAs, political bosses, doctors & psychiatrists do not entertain clients. Clients are expected to entertain them!

Do lawyers, CAs,  doctors, psychiatrists compete with other lawyers, CAs, doctors and psychiatrists in the manner say Wipro competes with Infosys? Do they have sales guys? Do they make presentations to their clients?

They do not charge a price. They charge fees. (Gurus have guru dakshina.) Do they negotiate with clients? Do their clients question them about their cost structure?

What we have are not clients (usually pronounced as Kly-ints). We have customers. See this quote from the Mahatma on Zoho's site. Incidentally, I saw this quote, a few decades ago, on a poster in the Khadi Bhandar shop on Connaught Circus. The shop assistants paid it no heed.

Peter Drucker said, "The purpose of a business is to create a customer". Can a doctor say the purpose of his practice is to create a sick person? Or a lawyer say that the purpose of his practice is to get more people to file litigations?

We have customers. Customers have the power.