Through the lectures, case studies, and my personal experiences, the term customer is often thrown around as this concrete person but I've often found in practice that the "customer" is often ambiguous.

In many projects, the customer may be internal employees that need software in improve their workflows or internal stakeholders that need to take a product to market.

It's only in outsourcing or integration work that I've seen the "customer" as an external group that's paying for the development and therefore can provide direct feedback.

Most of my experience had been where sales interprets what multiple customer have mentioned and then provides that feedback to leadership or the product manager. It's often more of a game of telephone than clear direction.

What has everyone else seen?