When AI gets faster, should humans get slower? Inside Mutual of Omaha's AI transformation, presented by Cresta.AI

Tripled revenue per call after hours. Abandon rate down from roughly 22% to under 2%. And human agents whose average handle time went up — on purpose.

Most contact center AI stories are told in the language of efficiency: shorter calls, fewer humans, more containment. Mutual of Omaha's direct sales organization found something more interesting. After deploying AI agents to handle after-hours qualification and overflow recovery, their human agents' average handle time went up, and revenue per call went up with it, because those agents were finally spending their time on qualified sales conversations instead of triage.

Laif Wheeler, VP of Customer Acquisition at Mutual of Omaha, walks through their multi-year AI transformation across a regulated, high-consideration sales floor: what they gave to AI agents, what they deliberately kept with humans, and where the handoff between the two makes or breaks the outcome. He'll also cover what arrived alongside the technology: how they staff and train for a team that's now part human and part AI, and the data plumbing and change-management work nobody puts on the roadmap.