Most teams launch their AI Assistant, see decent early numbers, then plateau. Sound familiar?
We analyzed data across thousands of deployments and found a clear pattern: many organizations achieve good adoption but stall before reaching great adoption, because they treat it as a change management exercise rather than an organizational transformation.
The top performers don't just launch and move on. Here's what they do differently.
The two metrics that matter
- MAU% — breadth of adoption (average customer: 22%, top performers: 51%)
- WAU/MAU — depth of engagement, i.e. how often monthly users return weekly (average: 35%, top performers: 42%)
Where you sit on these two dimensions tells you exactly what to focus on next.
The three-stage playbook
Stage 1 — Build Your User Base If you're below 40% MAU, this is your only job. Awareness campaigns alone won't move the needle, you need to optimize the product and run a deliberate change management strategy in parallel. The three biggest levers: enable the 5 core plugins (Knowledge Base, Proactive Ticket Notifications, Smart Handoff, Employee Comms, Approvals), connect more knowledge sources (4 connected systems = 2x the median MAU of 1 system), and send employee comms through the bot at least 3x per month.
Stage 2 — Increase Engagement Once you hit 40% MAU, shift focus to frequency. The path to high WAU/MAU is straightforward: build more high-value plugins. Data shows every 25 additional plugins installed gains ~2-3 percentage points in weekly active usage. Target 40+ plugins to start seeing consistent results, and use the Discover → Plan → Build framework to prioritize the ones tied to real business outcomes.
Stage 3 — Achieve Ideal State 40%+ MAU and 40%+ WAU/MAU. At this point you've built a flywheel: a large engaged user base ready to adopt new use cases fast, a platform developers can build on confidently, and ROI that's hard to argue with.
The teams that reach ideal state share one thing in common: they build a culture of adoption, proactive internal champions, executive buy-in tied to business objectives, and consistent promotion of new capabilities. The technology is the easy part.
Have a tip for driving adoption? Share it below!
!-->