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THE VERIFIED-CUSTOMER-RECORD INPUT

Verified Conduct Index

Verified Conduct Index, or VCI, is the record-based input that sits alongside human judgment. It asks what approved business records show about responsibilities the customer accepted and could reasonably control. This page is normative. The explanatory VCI page summarizes it for a wider audience, and this page governs wherever the two differ.

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THE NARROW QUESTION

What was agreed, and what 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

Six conditions for an eligible responsibility.

  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 record is evidence of one event.

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

Six states, from created to corrected.

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 MUST NOT COUNT

Nine categories the index MUST exclude.

An implementation MUST NOT admit any of the following as evidence of conduct, whether alone or in combination with an eligible record.

  • Protected traits, disability, health, language, family status, or close proxies for any of them
  • 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

How the index is calculated.

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. That asymmetry is exploitable: because an adverse event leaves the denominator while under challenge and a favorable one does not, disputing every adverse record drives the ratio toward 100. A cap on concurrent open disputes, or a treatment that holds the ratio rather than improving it, is required and unspecified.

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

Operational experience would improve this specification most.

Send an event definition that would not survive contact with real systems, a responsibility rule that misfires, a source failure this draft has not imagined, or a correction path that would fail in practice.

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