You can't build great products with secondhand insight
You can't build great products with secondhand insight
Your customer conversations are happening. Right now. Across sales, support, and marketing.
By the time those conversations reach you, they’ve been filtered, summarized, and stripped of what actually matters. You get the notes. You get the interpretation. You don’t get the reality.
And everyone keeps telling you to “talk to customers” and “be customer-centric”… but nobody’s taught you and your team how.
That’s why the Customer Conversation Compass exists.
Make a genuine human connection. This is about showing up as a person, not a process. Customer conversations work when there’s trust and context, not just a list of questions to get through.
CULTIVATE
Build the relationship over time. Trust, context, and continuity live in the relationship itself. One conversation is a data point. A relationship is a capability.
Do the work together. This includes interviews, workshops, programs, pilots—all the activities where customers help shape outcomes. Not “tell us what you think” but “let’s figure this out together.”
People need more than functionality from AI—they need clarity, respect, boundaries, and emotional safety.
These aren’t “nice-to-haves.” They are core to adoption, trust, and retention. And yet… they’ve been treated as afterthoughts.
Conversation Lab is a comfortable, casual virtual gathering I host once a month at no charge for senior-level community professionals across the country. I designed it as a free, small group, no-sales event where people can relax, relate and get real about the challenges and rewards of customer conversations.
“Conversation Lab was the first time in a long while I didn’t feel like I had to perform or defend my thinking. It was just five smart people talking honestly about how customers show up in real work. I left with clearer ideas, a few uncomfortable realizations, and notes I actually used the next week. That almost never happens.”
– Chief Product Officer, Mid-size tech firm
What is the Customer Conversation Compass?
The Customer Conversation Compass is a practical framework for helping product teams regain control of their customer relationships. It focuses on designing how conversations happen, not just collecting more feedback. The goal is clearer insight, stronger judgment, and better product decisions.
What problem does this actually solve?
Most product teams run on secondhand insight. Feedback gets filtered through tools, teams, dashboards, and summaries until it barely resembles what customers actually said. The Compass helps teams replace reactive, fragmented input with intentional, high-quality conversations that compound over time.
Is this a research framework?
No. This is not a research method, a survey system, or a replacement for discovery practices. It is a conversation design framework. It helps teams decide when to talk to customers, why they are talking, who should be involved, and how insights get translated into real product decisions.
Who is this for?
Product leaders and teams who:
Feel disconnected from real customer reality
Rely heavily on dashboards, tickets, or proxies
Want better judgment, not just more data
Know conversations matter but haven’t operationalized them
If your team says “we should talk to customers more” but never quite does, this was built for you.
How is this different from “talk to customers more”?
The Compass is about better conversations, not more conversations. Random interviews and reactive calls often create noise, not clarity. The Compass gives structure to conversations so they produce learning, alignment, and confidence instead of opinions and anecdotes.
What does the Compass work actually include?
The Compass typically covers:
How customer conversations fit into everyday product work
How teams listen without bias or agenda
How insights get translated into priorities and tradeoffs
How conversation skill becomes a repeatable capability
It is designed to be learned, practiced, and applied, not documented and forgotten.
Is this training, consulting, or a framework?
Yes. In practice, it shows up as hands-on workshops, coaching, and applied work inside real product teams. The framework gives the structure. The work is about building muscle memory through repeated practice.
How long does it take to see results?
Teams usually feel a shift quickly because conversations change immediately. Clearer decisions, stronger alignment, and fewer circular debates tend to follow soon after. Long-term value comes from compounding learning and relationships over time.
Does this replace tools like surveys, analytics, or support data?
No. Those tools still matter. The Compass helps teams stop treating them as substitutes for human conversation. It puts direct customer engagement back where it belongs: as a core input into judgment and strategy.
What makes this hard for teams?
Two things:
- Conversation is treated as a soft skill instead of a core product capability
- Teams underestimate how much design goes into good conversations
- The Compass makes both visible and actionable.
Is this only for early-stage companies?
Not at all. In fact, it is often more valuable for growing or mature teams where distance from customers has crept in over time.
What’s the end goal?
Products that reflect real customer reality. Teams that trust their judgment. Decisions made with clarity instead of guesswork. And customer relationships that don’t disappear behind tools and process.
This resonates! What’s the next step?
Start by redesigning how customer conversations actually work inside your team. That’s where the Compass starts.
Let’s talk: jake@jakemckee.com
SERVICE OFFERINGS
COMPASS AUDIT
“Show me where we’re off course.”
A fast, focused assessment of how customer conversations actually work today.
Who talks to customers. Why they talk to them. What gets heard. What gets lost. And how (or if) any of it influences decisions.
Good for teams who:
Feel disconnected from customers but can’t pinpoint why
Suspect they’re running on secondhand insight
Want clarity before committing to bigger change
Output:
A clear read on what’s broken, what’s missing, and where the biggest leverage is.
COMPASS SPRINT
“Fix the system, not the symptoms.”
A hands-on working sprint where you redesign customer conversations around real product decisions. This is not training in a vacuum. Teams practice, apply, and change behavior in real time.
Good for teams who:
Want immediate improvement in how conversations happen
Are stuck in reactive interviews and noisy feedback
Need better alignment between insight and product direction
Output:
A redesigned conversation flow, shared language, and repeatable practices the team can keep using.
COMPASS ENGAGEMENT
“Make it stick.”
Ongoing coaching and reinforcement to turn conversation skill into a durable product capability. This is where learning compounds and judgment sharpens over time.
Good for teams who:
Don’t want this to become “another initiative”
Are scaling and worried about losing customer proximity
Want consistent decision quality, not one-time insight
Output:
Stronger judgment, better decisions, and a team that knows how to stay close to customers without burning out.
Read more on Jake’s newsletter
Hi! I’m Jake McKee, the original Community Guy. Going all the way back to 1996, I’ve played an instrumental role in building online communities and Community Driven Product Development programs for some of the world’s most successful and recognizable brands, including LEGO, Apple, Southwest Airlines, Canon, and H&R Block.
I consult with organizations of all sizes to help solve community and business challenges of all kinds. I’ve co-authored books on social media and community strategy and spoken to and run workshops for audiences of business professionals countless times. I created CX 5essions, a community project that connects senior-level online professionals every month for conversation, connection, and camaraderie. As if that’s not enough community nerdery, I also created a web comic about community management, Confessions of a Community Manager.
