Use accepted outbound recency for ambiguous support replies

When several active support cases share one provider conversation and the inbound text does not uniquely identify a case, route by the uniquely most recent provider-accepted guidance—not by load or case creation time. Keep the affinity window short, and fail closed when acceptance timestamps tie, the provider contact is ambiguous, the guidance is stale, or the newest case is human-owned. Explicit unique step references should retain precedence. This preserves conversational continuity without turning phone-level recency into permanent ownership.

Applies when: multiple unresolved support cases share one SMS or messaging contact. Keywords: support reply attribution accepted message recency conversation ownership ties