Quick Wins: Building Early Momentum

Overview

If users don’t see value from Copilot in their first week, most stop trying. First impressions drive long-term adoption. Quick wins—scenarios that deliver immediate, visible value with minimal effort—create the momentum that sustains your adoption initiative.

This video covers what makes a good quick win, walks through the five most reliable Copilot quick wins, explains how to document and share them, and shows how to build from quick wins into deeper adoption.

What You’ll Learn

• Quick Win Criteria: What makes a scenario effective for early momentum
• Top 5 Quick Wins: The most reliable Copilot scenarios across M365 apps
• Sharing Wins: How to document and amplify success stories
• Building Depth: Moving from quick wins to sustained engagement

Script

Hook: the first week decides everything

Research consistently shows that users who don’t find value in a new tool within the first week rarely come back to it. They form an opinion—”this isn’t useful”—and that opinion is very hard to change.

Quick wins prevent that outcome. When someone uses Copilot and gets an immediately useful result, they think “what else can this do?” That curiosity drives exploration. Exploration drives habit formation. And habits drive adoption.

Your job is to make that first successful experience happen within minutes, not weeks.

What makes a good quick win

Not every Copilot feature is a good quick win. The best quick wins share five characteristics.

Immediate. The value is visible within minutes, not days or weeks. The user tries it once and sees the result right away.

Universal. It works for most users regardless of their role. An analyst, an executive, and an administrative professional can all benefit from it.

Reliable. It produces good results consistently. A feature that works brilliantly sometimes and fails other times undermines confidence.

Visible. Others can see or hear about the result. A quick win that happens privately doesn’t create momentum. A quick win that someone shares in a Teams channel inspires others to try.

Low friction. It requires minimal training or setup. If someone needs a 30-minute tutorial before they can try it, it’s not a quick win.

When you’re choosing which scenarios to promote to new users, apply these five criteria. Scenarios that pass all five are your quick win candidates.

The top 5 quick wins for Copilot

Here are the five most reliable quick wins across M365, in order of impact.

Number one: meeting summaries in Teams. After any Teams meeting with transcription enabled, open the meeting recap and ask Copilot to summarize the key decisions and action items. This works immediately, saves 15 to 30 minutes of note review, and the result is shareable. It’s the single most impactful first experience for most users. Tell new users: “Your next Teams meeting, ask Copilot to summarize it. See what happens.”

Number two: email catch-up in Outlook. Open Outlook, select a long email thread or ask Copilot to summarize what you missed. For anyone who returns from vacation or a busy day to find 200 emails, this is transformative. “Catch me up on this thread” turns 10 minutes of reading into 30 seconds of summary.

Number three: draft generation in Word. Open a new document and ask Copilot to create a first draft. “Draft a project status update covering milestones, risks, and next steps.” The output isn’t final—it’s a starting point. But starting from a structured draft instead of a blank page saves significant time and reduces the activation energy to begin writing.

Number four: chat catch-up in Teams. Open a Teams channel you haven’t checked in a few days and ask Copilot to summarize what happened. For anyone juggling multiple channels, this turns 20 minutes of scrolling into a 30-second summary. It works for group chats too.

Number five: presentation creation in PowerPoint. Open PowerPoint and ask Copilot to create a presentation from a document or outline. “Create a briefing deck from this project report.” The slides aren’t perfect, but they’re a structured starting point that you refine rather than building from scratch.

Walk new users through all five in their first training session. Then tell them: “Pick one. Try it today. See what happens.”

Documenting and sharing quick wins

Quick wins that stay private don’t build momentum. You need to capture and amplify them.

Create a simple template for success stories. Who used Copilot? What task did they apply it to? How much time did it save? What was their reaction? Keep it brief—three or four sentences is enough.

Share these stories through multiple channels. Post them in your Copilot adoption Teams channel. Include them in your weekly adoption email. Feature them in leadership reports. The same success story told across multiple channels reaches different audiences.

The critical element: have users share in their own words. A success story from the adoption team sounds like marketing. A success story from a colleague sounds like a genuine recommendation. “I used Copilot to summarize a 45-minute meeting and it captured every action item. I’m never going back to manual notes.” That’s credible and motivating.

Build a prompt library from your quick wins. When someone discovers a prompt that works well, add it to a shared collection. Over time, this library becomes your organization’s Copilot playbook—proven scenarios with proven prompts, organized by role and task.

Close: from quick wins to deeper adoption

Quick wins get attention. Depth keeps engagement.

Once users experience their first quick win, they’re open to learning more. That’s when you introduce role-specific use cases. “You loved the meeting summary—now let me show you how Copilot can help with your weekly status reports.” Each new capability builds on the credibility established by the last.

Use your quick win momentum strategically. Every success story is a proof point for the next phase of adoption. Every converted user is a potential champion. Every prompt in your shared library lowers the barrier for the next person.

Start with quick wins. Build from there. And never stop sharing what’s working.

Sources & References

• Microsoft Copilot adoption resources — Quick start scenarios and adoption guidance
• Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — Copilot capabilities across M365 applications
• Copilot Prompt Gallery — Scenario-based prompt examples for quick wins