顧客

1. Origins, structure, and basic meaning

• Structure: 顧客 is a noun read こきゃく, meaning a customer or client who buys a product or uses a service.
• Basic usage: Use 顧客の要望 for customers' requests and 顧客に対応する for attending to a customer.
  • 顧客の要望を聞いて商品の形を改善しました。 describes listening to customers' needs and improving the product's form; 店員は一人一人の顧客に丁寧に対応しています。 describes the clerk attending courteously to each customer.

2. Common pitfalls and similar expressions

• 顧客の要望
  • の links the requests to the customers who make them.
• 顧客に対応する
  • に marks the customer as the person being attended to.
• 一人一人の顧客
  • This emphasizes treating customers individually, one by one, rather than only as a group.