Jake McKee
    Book a Call

    Product team training and consulting

    Build products customers want to keep using.

    I teach product teams to get more valuable insights from customer conversations, so they can build better products that customers want to keep using.

    Book a Free Strategy Call 20-minute conversation. Personalized one-page Product Challenge Brief within 48 hours.
    A product team studies dashboards at a table while a customer nearby raises a hand, unnoticed

    More customer feedback than ever. And somehow, we’re still guessing.

    When I studied product design in college, we were taught that every letter from a customer represented 15,000 people who never bothered to write.

    Back then, customer feedback was scarce.

    Today, we’re drowning in it. Surveys, reviews, support tickets, AI summaries. We have more ways to hear from customers than ever before.

    And yet product teams still struggle to understand what customers really want, what matters most to them, and what will keep them coming back.

    Your customers disappear when you need them most.

    1. Research

      ● Customers in the room

    2. Development

      ○ Customers missing

    3. Testing

      ● Customers in the room

    Most product teams talk to customers at the beginning of development, when they’re researching what to build.

    They talk to them again at the end, when they’re testing what they’ve built.

    But what about everything in between?

    That’s when product teams make the decisions that determine whether customers will actually want to keep using the product.

    And too often, they’re making those decisions without the customer in the room.

    Months later, they’re wondering why customers are leaving.

    The time to earn customer loyalty is before you need it.

    Make every customer conversation more valuable.

    Your product team already talks to customers. But are those conversations revealing what matters, changing product decisions, and helping you keep customers?

    Listen beyond the obvious

    Learn to listen for unspoken needs, recognize unexpected insights, and move beyond predetermined interview questions.

    Get more value from customer conversations

    Make better use of the customer meetings, visits, demos, and conversations you already have, instead of simply collecting more feedback.

    Turn what you hear into better products

    Bring customer understanding into product decisions throughout development, so what you build meets real needs and gives customers reasons to stay.

    See How I Help

    Customer retention starts long before renewal.

    By the time customers decide to leave, the opportunity to earn their loyalty may already have passed.

    The better opportunity is earlier, while you’re still making the decisions that shape their experience.

    When product teams understand what customers value and act on it throughout development, they can build products worth staying for.

    That’s the outcome my work is designed to support: better products, more valuable customer experiences, and stronger retention.

    Don’t wait until customers are leaving to give them a reason to stay.

    Jake McKee speaking on stage in front of a 90-9-1 pyramid slide

    25+ years helping companies understand their customers.

    I’m Jake McKee.

    I’ve spent more than 25 years helping companies like LEGO, Apple, and Southwest Airlines understand and work with the people who use their products.

    Today, I teach product teams the practical listening and conversation skills that make customer input more valuable.

    My goal is simple: help teams build better products that customers want to keep using.

    • LEGO
    • Apple
    • Southwest Airlines
    • EA Games
    • Canon
    More About Jake

    Are your customer conversations helping you keep customers?

    Let’s spend 20 minutes talking about how your team currently learns from customers, what happens to those insights, and where there might be opportunities to improve.

    Within 48 hours, I’ll send you a personalized one-page Product Challenge Brief with my initial observations and a practical starting point.

    Book a Free Strategy Call

    Illustrative example. Fictional company and scenario.

    Product Challenge Brief

    Company:
    Northstar Equipment
    Product:
    Portable warehouse label printer

    The challenge

    Northstar is midway through building its next-generation portable label printer. The team is deciding whether to prioritize faster printing, longer battery life, or a redesigned interface, without talking to operators since early research.

    Initial recommendation

    “Don’t choose between battery life, speed, and interface changes yet. First, understand what interrupts the work. That overlooked insight may decide whether operators keep using the new printer at all.”

    Podcast

    Conversation Lab Podcast

    Real conversations with people who rely on conversation in their work.

    Listen now

    Monthly event

    Conversation Lab

    A free, small-group online gathering for product leaders. Five people, no sales, just ideas.

    Request a seat

    Free tools

    Methods behind the work, like the Crucial Few Finder, the Conversation Debt assessment, and the card deck. See all tools