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THE VERIFIED-CUSTOMER-RECORD INPUT

Verified Conduct Index

Verified Conduct Index, or VCI, is the data-backed counterweight to human judgment. It asks what approved business records show about responsibilities the customer accepted and could reasonably control.

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THE NARROW QUESTION

What did the customer agree to do—and what actually happened?

What does the verified operational record show about the customer's fulfillment of responsibilities they accepted and could reasonably control?

“Verified” describes provenance, attribution, evidence, and lifecycle. It does not mean every assertion made by a business is automatically true.

ELIGIBLE RESPONSIBILITIES

A business cannot invent the rules after seeing the outcome.

  1. 01

    The responsibility was clear, accessible, and disclosed before or when the customer accepted it.

  2. 02

    It was specific, proportionate, connected to the interaction, and consistent with consumer rights.

  3. 03

    The customer could reasonably control the outcome and had accessible ways to fulfill it.

  4. 04

    The business can verify both the responsibility and the observed result.

  5. 05

    The responsibility was registered before its outcome was known.

  6. 06

    Exceptions, accommodations, business failures, third-party causes, corrections, and reversals are recorded too.

EXAMPLES

A business record is evidence—not a conclusion about a person.

RecordWhat may followWhat may not
Canceled within the disclosed windowThe cancellation responsibility was fulfilled.The customer created friction.
A no-show appears in the recordA potential event needs attribution, notice, and causation review.The customer is unreliable.
A payment dispute was filedThe event remains pending through its lifecycle.Filing a dispute is misconduct.
A rental company recorded damageAn allegation exists and needs approved evidence.The customer caused the damage.
The customer contacted support repeatedlyNo VCI conclusion follows.The customer is high-friction.

THE EVENT LIFECYCLE

Records need states for review, correction, and reversal.

01

Created

An approved system records an operational outcome.

02

Validated

The source, responsibility, identity, evidence, and duplication checks pass.

03

Pending

Notice, cure, evidence, or outside review remains incomplete. There is no adverse effect.

04

Active

A fulfilled responsibility or properly finalized failure becomes eligible.

05

Disputed

An adverse event leaves active use while the challenge is reviewed.

06

Corrected

A resolution, reversal, invalidation, expiry, or replacement changes the active state.

WHAT NEVER COUNTS BY ITSELF

Commercial value is not conduct.

  • Spending, tips, profitability, loyalty tier, or lifetime value
  • App use, self-service, or avoiding employee assistance
  • Complaints, reviews, refunds, returns, or accommodation requests
  • Support contacts, escalations, or cost to serve
  • Business outages, cancellations, delays, or inaccessible processes
  • Pending chargebacks, allegations, internal fraud labels, or risk segments
  • Missing records or customer nonresponse
  • Responsibilities assigned to the wrong person in a group

CONSUMER VISIBILITY

People can inspect the records that affect them.

A consumer must be able to see the business and interaction, the responsibility, the observed outcome, the current state, the general evidence standard, and whether business or outside causes were considered.

Valid challenges include mistaken identity, undisclosed responsibility, incorrect data, lack of control, business failure, insufficient evidence, duplicate issuance, prohibited use, and an ignored exception or accommodation.

THE CANDIDATE CALCULATION

The complete event profile matters more than one average.

Raw VCI = 100 × weighted fulfilled responsibilities ÷ weighted finalized responsibilities

Only active fulfilled and properly finalized events enter this research ratio. Pending, disputed, unknown, reversed, invalidated, and externally caused events do not.

The formula is not approved for production. A real VCI must also preserve event type, evidence quality, attribution, coverage, missingness, recency, concentration, disputes, reversals, and business failures. Having no record is not a bad record—and it is not proof of a good one.

HELP IMPROVE VCI

Which record would be unfair—or impossible—to interpret?

The most useful challenge may be an event definition, responsibility rule, source failure, or correction problem the current draft misses.

Challenge Verified Conduct Index