The great Copilot showdown: How Centrica’s champions took AI prompting skills to the next level

About Centrica

Centrica is a leading international energy services and solutions company, with a strong focus on sustainability, innovation, and customer-centricity. Centrica is undergoing a digital transformation to better serve millions of homes and businesses. As part of this journey, Centrica has embraced Microsoft 365 Copilot to enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and empower employees with AI-driven insights.

Their partnership with Microsoft reflects a shared vision: to harness the power of generative AI to drive operational excellence and future-ready capabilities across the organisation.

Overview

When energy services and solutions company Centrica set out to embed Microsoft 365 Copilot within their business, they knew success would depend on more than just access to the technology. They needed champions – skilled, confident users able to get the most out of Copilot through expert-level prompting contextualised to their roles and Centrica’s mission. That’s where TeamQuest: The Great Copilot Showdown, QA’s one-day, gamified learning workshop, where participants compete in teams to solve real-world challenges, came in.

The challenge

Centrica had already embraced Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of its digital transformation journey. But to unlock its full potential, they needed to go beyond basic feature knowledge. Their champions needed advanced prompting fluency, strategic thinking, and cross-app integration skills across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and Copilot Chat.

The solution

QA designed TeamQuest: The Great Copilot Showdown, as a one-day, instructor-led, gamified experience. Built around a spy-themed narrative, the training immersed participants in real-world, scenario-based challenges. Learners earned 'Microbucks' for completing tasks, collaborated in teams, and competed on a live leaderboard – all designed by QA’s experts in learning to ensure maximum engagement, knowledge retention, and readiness to apply skills. The training focused on structured prompting, role-based framing, and using Copilot Chat as a strategic thought partner.

The impact

The Great Copilot Showdown workshops focused on enabling skills transformation through high learner engagement and long-term knowledge retention. Feedback from Centrica’s internal Copilot Community validated the impact of the training, with learners describing it as “10/10. Massively informative and useful.”

Participants reported increased confidence and practical takeaways, noting that the session helped them rethink how they use Copilot and build “fantastic, efficient, and effective prompts.” Others highlighted how the training revealed key fundamentals that could “accelerate [their] generative AI tool capability no end.”

Centrica’s Copilot champions community, who were already familiar with the tool and had been using it steadily for over six months, walked away with a new understanding of the tool’s full potential. This feedback underscores the success of the event in shifting mindsets, building prompting fluency, and unlocking better ways of working with Copilot.

A Word from Centrica

"The Great Copilot Showdown was a game-changer for our champions. It went far beyond traditional training—immersing our people in real-world scenarios that built confidence, creativity, and strategic prompting skills. The feedback has been fantastic, and it's already making a tangible impact on how the Champions are using Microsoft 365 Copilot across the business."

— Bill Compton, Adoption Change Manager, Centrica

Conclusion

By combining Microsoft 365 Copilot with a human-centred, gamified learning approach, Centrica has empowered a new generation of Copilot champions. The Great Copilot Showdown is more than a training session – it’s a catalyst for cultural change, helping Centrica embed AI into the fabric of how work gets done.