How come my messaging rate dropped even though I responded to old messages to try to fix it?

[sysleeper256]

Hi, I was not getting notifications from Fiverr to my email that I actually had messages, so I missed ONE message these past 2 months. I saw that my messaging rate had dropped to 75% and I was moved from LV2 to LV1. So I checked the message, which at this point was about a month old and they probably already found someone else, replied to it to say I was sorry and couldn't do it and hope they'd found someone else, and then today my rate dropped even more and my response time went up (longer). Do I also have to reply to messages where we already had a convo but I was not the last one to respond? Like when the buyer says something, like thanks, do I have to send something back to close the circle and stop that from counting as an unresponded message, or is that rate only for newcoming messages that have the red clock symbol? When does this reset?

 

Also I do have some other missed/unresponded messages from years ago but I think this rate only counts toward 90 days and it would be useless to respond to those messages now. Also this is the ONLY reason I dropped levels, everything else is 100%, so I'm looking to fix it.

[alcabsn]

6 minutes ago, sysleeper256 said:

Like when the buyer says something, like thanks, do I have to send something back to close the circle and stop that from counting as an unresponded message

I do reply in my case. Even though the buyer already said thanks, I would also thank him for hiring me for the project and that would make me the last one to say something. The buyer obviously don't need to reply anymore and that would be the end of our conversation.

This is from a Fiverr article:

How Does The Response Rate Work?

It tracks the percentage of first responses sent within 24 hours over the last 60 days.

 

For example, if you received ten new requests in your Inbox in the last 60 days and replied to 9 of them within 24 hours of receiving each one, your response rate is 90%.

Note: if you reply to the last message more than 24 hours after receiving it, your response rate will still be 90%. However, we recommend that sellers respond even after 24 hours.

 

If you would like to check the article that I mentioned, please click the link that I attached below:

https://www.fiverr.com/support/articles/360010452637