What do you call a customer at a government office?

Let's say I walk into a Service Canada or a DMV or some other government office that serves people needing assistance with something. Am I a customer? A client? Neither of those seem right since I'm not paying, just using a public service. What's the word for this?

Sample sentence: The helpful agent at the Service Canada assisted the ____ with her passport renewal.

Solution 1:

While you are right that neither customer nor client seems quite right (in that their 'home' seems to be in commercial settings), there has recently been a trend to use precisely these terms for this purpose, presumably in order to make people more comfortable with using such services. Between the two, client is probably better than customer, as the traditional notion of a client does not logically entail that a payment must be involved (one can be a client of a lawyer working pro bono).

If one does not wish to join this trend, one probably won't be able to find a general term that would cover everybody who is seeking or receiving some service from the government. One usually refers to such an individual by a specific term for the individual's status that is relevant to the transaction in question. In many cases, for example, the individual will be an applicant (for a passport, driver's licence and suchlike). In other cases, the individual may be referred to as a taxpayer, voter, driver, beneficiary, etc., depending on the nature of the government's service that is under discussion.

Solution 2:

What does the DMV call them?

From the Wisconsin DMV:

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​DMVs are open for all driver license and ID card customers. Driver licenses can be ​renewed online for most customers.

From the California DMV:

Over 1.6 million customers renewed their driver license in the first quarter of FY 2020-2021. Of those customers, over 900 thousand were eligible to renew via an alternative service channel. The chart below provides a breakdown of the method used by these eligible customers to renew their driver license. Field Office totals reflect those customers who chose to renew their driver license in a field office, even though they were eligible to renew using an alternative service channel.

From the Colorado DMV:

Due to a large volume of calls being received by customers trying to schedule appointments, customers calling our Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) call center have experienced a significant wait time and difficulty connecting to the phone queue.

Phone scheduling was used to prioritize customers who had no choice but to use in-office services. In order to help alleviate wait times and customer frustration, the DMV has reopened online scheduling.

The clear preference is for customer, though I did see the domain specific term "driver" being used too.

Solution 3:

That is a great question, and your logic is perfect. I can't think of an English word that means someone just wanting a public service.

In the US we would just use the word "customer", as it implies we don't work there and are needing help from someone who does. "Client" (in the US) would refer more to a regular paying customer - like a man who has a lawyer on his payroll.