Services - Jake McKee

It’s hard to build great products with secondhand insights.

HOW WE WORK TOGETHER

Conversation Compass work shows up in three ways, each designed to meet you where you are and move you toward real, durable change in how your team engages with customers.

Compass Audit

Map your Conversation Debt before you try to pay it down.

A structured assessment of how customer conversations actually work inside your organization today.

What we examine

Who talks to customers, how often, and why
What gets captured and what gets lost
Where Conversation Debt is accumulating and why

Scope

Focused half-day review
Or deeper multi-week diagnostic

Output

A clear map of where Conversation Debt is accumulating, what’s driving it, and where to focus first.

Compass Sprint

Focused, fast engagements that move the needle immediately.

Shorter, high-impact engagements built around a specific challenge or opportunity.

Formats

One Day Engagement Sprints
Targeted workshops
Small on-demand retainers

How it works

Bring a specific challenge or decision
Work through it together in real time

Output

Something real, not a deck. A solved problem, a sharper process, or a clearer decision.

Compass Engagement

A structured partnership to build and execute your conversation strategy.

Longer-term retainer engagements for organizations ready to make customer conversation a core, sustained capability.

What we do together

Design the conversation strategy
Build the systems to support it
Execute and refine over time

Ongoing

Regular sessions and coaching
Continuous refinement as you scale

Output

Customer conversation as a permanent team capability, not a one-time initiative.

THE FRAMEWORK BEHIND THE WORK

Every engagement is built on the five pillars of the Customer Conversation Compass. These aren’t a checklist. They’re a diagnostic lens for understanding where your team’s customer conversations are breaking down and what to fix first.

1	Conversation Debt	Every day without direct customer contact, the gap grows. What your team thinks customers need drifts further from reality. Debt compounds.
2	Conversation Tuning	Sometimes you’re asking the wrong questions, leading them, or rushing them. We fix the moments where teams accidentally steer instead of listen.
3	Conversation Architecture	Good conversations don’t just happen. Who talks to customers? When? How do you capture insight without killing the conversation?
4	Conversation Amplification	One person hearing the customer isn’t enough. The insight has to reach everyone building the product, undiluted.
5	Conversation Traction	Conversations without action are theater. The insights have to turn into real decisions and real movement.

Want the full picture?

Explore the Compass framework at
community5.wpenginepowered.com/compass

This is not about talking to customers more.
It’s about talking to them more effectively, and building a team that knows how to apply it every day.

How engagements typically work

Most engagements follow a simple shape:
Audit → Redesign → Reinforce

We start by understanding where conversations are actually breaking down. We redesign how they happen. Then we build the muscle memory to make it stick.

Depending on your team’s needs, this can take the form of a focused workshop, a structured sprint, or ongoing advisory coaching. Some teams need a fast read on what’s broken. Others need to rebuild from the ground up.

Is this right for you?

This work is a good fit if:

You want your team talking to customers more directly
Customer feedback feels noisy, confusing, or hard to apply
Product decisions are driven more by opinion than insight
You want to build internal capability, not outsource thinking
If that sounds familiar, we should talk.

Let’s find out where your team’s conversations are breaking down!

Results that speak for themselves

Jake understands not only how a community should work – he knows how to make it work, for real. He knows what it takes to make a community successful. There are not many individuals out there who understand community from a practical as well as a theoretical standpoint – but Jake is one of those rare individuals, and I recommend his work highly.

My team had the pleasure of working with Jake to help develop and execute our Online Community Strategy. He started by helping us develop the mission statement of our Community, and execute a SWOT and competitive analysis, We then created a 12-month plan to help us hit our goals. Jake also worked with our community team to create our first playbook to help communicate the strategy and processes for Calix employees to engage with our Community and Customer Advocates.

"Ridiculously efficient" is the phrase that comes to mind when I reflect on my experience with Jake as a Community Consultant. He is the consummate business professional that is diligent about listening, conducting a thorough discovery phase and making insight-driven recommendations. Jake digests large amounts of information, makes quick decisions, and disseminates clear communications to the project sponsor and Executive team members.

Jake is a rare find if you're looking for expertise in the area of Online Communities. He has a diverse background ranging from consulting to brand work (at some of the largest brands in the world) and has proven success in building strategies that resonate with senior leaders. I would highly recommend Jake if you are looking for expert talent to help you take your online community to the next level.