A dashboard should not demand constant attention, but a customer message should not disappear just because the browser tab is in the background. Lavenity’s operator email notifications are designed as a delayed safety net rather than an alert for every event.
Why the notification is delayed
Each operator can enable or disable notifications in Personal preferences and choose an unanswered-message delay from 1 minute to 24 hours. New accounts start with notifications enabled and a two-minute delay, which can be adjusted to match the team’s response-time promise.
When a visitor writes, Lavenity starts an independent timer for every opted-in operator. Before sending anything, it checks the conversation again: it must still be open, the latest message must still be from the visitor, and at least one visitor message must remain unread.
When Lavenity emails an operator
Opening and reading the conversation or sending a reply cancels pending notifications for that thread. This avoids the common failure mode where an operator resolves the issue in the dashboard and then receives a stale email about it a minute later.
An operator receives at most one email during the same unanswered episode. It collects every unread customer message, attachment context, and a link back to the Lavenity dashboard. After the team engages, the episode resets, so a later unanswered message can create a fresh notification.
Deduplication and stale-notification cancellation
Short delays work well for teams that promise near-live support; longer delays suit lower-volume inboxes or non-urgent sites. The goal is the same in both cases: protect the response without turning the operator’s inbox into a second noisy chat feed.
Choose the right notification delay
Start with the team’s actual promise. If the website offers a response within minutes, use a shorter fallback. A lower-volume or asynchronous team can choose a longer delay. A threshold that is too short duplicates the dashboard in email; one that is too long does not protect the customer experience.
Test the full scenario: send a message and wait for the email, then repeat the test and open the conversation before the timer ends. No email should arrive in the second case. This verifies both SMTP delivery and the more important behavior: stale notifications disappear after an operator responds.
Frequently asked question
Will an operator receive an email after a teammate has already replied?
No. Lavenity checks the conversation again before sending. If the message was read, an operator replied, the thread closed, or the latest message is no longer from the visitor, the pending notification is cancelled.