I’ve been struggling with how to represent the idea that there is a reply waiting. I wanted to make it something that everyone can easily understand. But the ‘1’ is hard-coded and does not actually indicate anything… if there are 2 replies it doesn’t say ‘2’.
So yes I agree that this is a completely unsatisfactory solution. In fact, I’ve already decided to change it again. Here is how I designed it to work in the Client portal: