When a call comes in, the conversation is opened. Right hand side recent cases refers to the public view 'Cases for Recent Records'. there is no sort order defined. for one of our customers, there have been many cases open.. the agent wanted to have the newest created cases to be on top. the reason is that the customer might have an issue and ring up the contact center multiple time for the same issue. to spot which couple of cases have been create most recently (oh there is already a case opened yesterday, and even this morning [maybe even duplicates because the customer thought that maybe it gets done faster with another person ...]).

i guess a default sort order makes sense. modified on or created on most recent would makes sense to me. or even add a sort control so that the agent could sort. (customer I am calling for a thing i have mentioned a long time ago but stil unresolved...). it depends maybe on the situation.