The Customer Success Playbook

Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E65 - Jake Mckee - Community VS Data Driven Road Map

• Kevin Metzger • Season 3 • Episode 65

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What happens when passionate customer feedback clashes with cold, hard data? Jake McKee tackles this age-old product dilemma with wisdom earned from years at Lego and building communities for Fortune 500 brands. This episode of the customer success playbook reveals why treating community building as relationship development—not just feedback collection—transforms how companies balance emotional customer input with analytical metrics. McKee's "everybody goes home happy" philosophy demonstrates how sustainable product decisions emerge when companies design mutually beneficial relationships rather than extracting value from user communities. From scale modeling to high-end fusion restaurants, this conversation weaves personal insights with professional strategies for community-driven product development.


Detailed Analysis

McKee's approach to resolving the tension between passionate customer feedback and data-driven metrics represents a sophisticated understanding of modern product development challenges. His framework moves beyond the traditional either/or mentality to reveal how qualitative community insights can actually strengthen quantitative analysis when properly interpreted through relationship context.

The discussion illuminates critical flaws in conventional product development cycles, particularly the tendency to collect requirements upfront, disappear into development "black boxes" for months, then emerge with solutions disconnected from evolving customer needs. McKee's community-driven product development methodology keeps customer voices actively engaged throughout the development process, creating real-time feedback loops that prevent costly misalignments.

Perhaps most valuable is McKee's perspective on starting small with community building. Rather than investing in expensive platforms and complex infrastructure, he advocates for beginning immediately with simple relationship-building activities—introducing customers to each other, facilitating peer connections, and treating community development as an ongoing relationship rather than a marketing project. This customer success playbook approach recognizes that authentic communities emerge from genuine value exchange, not sophisticated technology platforms.

The conversation also explores the nuanced art of community participation, whether in branded platforms or external spaces like Reddit. McKee's guidance on "showing up" rather than "taking over" provides practical wisdom for companies looking to engage authentically with existing customer communities rather than disrupting established dynamics.

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Kevin Metzger:

Customer success. Welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast. I'm Kevin Metzger here again with my co-host Roman Reon. We're joined by Jake McKee, the community guy, Roman. We've already had a really engaging first show on human driven AI design. Are you ready for today?

Roman Trebon:

I, I can't wait. This is gonna be great. But Kev, before we tackle our one big question, you know, let's do a quick round of personal questions so our audience can get to know Jake a little better. Jake, you on board for that? Absolutely. You spent years at Lego, so I know our audience is jealous, probably like I am, which is awesome. Alright, so what's the coolest lesson those master builders over at Lego taught you about the concept of community?

Jake McKee:

Well, I gotta give you two. There's so much that came out of that that I, I don't know if I can narrow it down to just one thing, but. Yeah, the, the first one was my, my mantra that for direct customer engagement and community work has, has lasted me a career at this point, which is everybody goes home happy. It's a mantra of community building that is really focused on this idea that I heard so many times from my colleagues at Lego that, oh, you know we just gotta do stuff for them and there's no return for us. That's a bad deal, right? We don't want that. They don't want that because if we're not getting anything as a, from the company side out of this connection, this relationship with the, the community base, we're not gonna do it very long. Right. We might do a project or two and then lose interest or, or not find value for it and cut the funding or the, the, the time investment. So. By the same token you know, really understanding what the fans want and what they're interested in, not just what they're complaining about, or it's getting to know somebody through the anger or through the upset or through the questions instead of in spite of it, right? So if they're upset about something, what's really driving that in the background? What's gonna make them happy? What are they looking for? And then how do we have a conversation between company and customer on an ongoing, regular basis where that. Direct connection happens, and I can say to them, look, I really want to deliver that kind of set to you or that ability to buy these kind of parts. What I need in return though, because this year we're working on retention or we're working on launching this new project or we're doing, working on whatever it might be. That's what I'm working on. I need you guys to help me with that. Here's three ideas. And they go, oh, no problem. We can do that. And then it becomes this mutually beneficial relationship and it really is a relationship at that point. Right. You heard on Monday, I'm, I always talk about relationships. That's really fundamentally the work that I do is building these relationships between company, customer, and now ais. But yeah, it's really building that relationship is, is number one. The other, the second I'll give you is the idea that I established fairly early on in my work, which was Legos, a creative medium. And today, you know, we see Lego on everybody's desks at all kinds of office buildings all across the world. And you know, I'm always surprised by the people that are outside the realm of who you think would have Lego on their desk at work. But I recently ran into a client that said, Hey, come over here. You know, I wanna show you this woman's desk and. There's this middle aged woman that had a desk hovered in Lego flowers, right? Something that wouldn't have happened 10 years ago, it just wouldn't have been a normal thing. Right now it is. And I think part of that comes down to the message that I always try to get across, that we're not here to sell boxes. We're here, really both me as a community person representing the company. Me as a community person working with the community members themselves, and both of those two entities on either side as well. We're all here to promote this idea that Lego is a creative medium because if I can get you to believe it's a creative medium, I can get you to feel proud about going and talking about the fact that you have a Lego room in your house with tens of thousands of bricks, right? I can get you excited about buying a, a Christmas present that's Lego and maybe a little bit more expensive than something else you were considering for your grandkid that Christmas season. You're thinking, well, I'm, you are your grandfather, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, the, the grand, the grandchild, you're thinking, well, this is a great toy. Right? I'm giving them a creative medium, not just a disposable toy. Right. But the grandfather as well might be as, as excited to participate in, in building that kit with the grandkid is as the grandkid is. Right. So there's, and it's a creative medium, bringing them together. So it's really thinking about when it comes to community building, how do you step beyond? Business is there for, or what the customer demands are and what's that shared purpose in between? That's so critical.

Roman Trebon:

We actually had, I won't mention names. We had a former guest, we were talking about what they do to kind of unwind outside of work, which is sort of a foreshadowing to a question that may be coming up for you. But. What, what he said was, and he pulled up pictures, giant Lego sets, like giant, the Titanic. Yeah. Empire State Building Titanic table. Right. It was awesome.

Kevin Metzger:

So what's maybe an off the beaten path in Austin that we should visit if we come, if we come to your town and visit Austin? Man.

Jake McKee:

So it's almost certainly gonna be trunks that I'll recommend to you because these days, you know, I'm, I'm not cool and hanging out on sixth Street with, with, you know, college kids. Neither are, are we, so

Roman Trebon:

restaurants are perfect.

Jake McKee:

Yeah, that's right. But yeah, my wife and I are, are, are huge foodies. That's tends to be majority of our date nights is going out to interesting restaurants. And the one, first and foremost recommendation, although it's not quite as you know, hole in the wall as it used to be thankfully is a place called Conge. C-A-N-J-E. That's a, a real high-end fusion Jamaican Caribbean food type of place. It is. That sounds good. Absolutely fantastic. And I think they were in the running for Michelin Star this last time. Missed it. And I'm not sure how they're just off the charts good, but also they're not one of those places like French Laundry where you go into and you think, okay, I'm never having that kind of food again. But it was great for the one experience I crave their jerk chicken on a weekly basis.

Roman Trebon:

I haven't had Jamaican here in Atlanta, Kevin, in a while, but now that Jake's mentioned that, I think I'm gonna make a run.

Kevin Metzger:

You know what? Well there's another one, there's one over there's one not too far away. I can't remember what it's called, but we might,

Roman Trebon:

I'll get the Google Maps pin after, after the show, so. Alright, well let's Jake, last one, we'll do a quick one. When you're out, when you're not working outside of leg wing, what do you do to relax?

Jake McKee:

Mostly relax. My main hobby is scale modeling. So I build very complex, very small things. Oh, awesome. And yeah, these days I've added the the 3D two, three different 3D printers and laser cutters, and. All kinds of other stuff in addition to all the hand created items. So, you know, I'm making a World War making a fully detailed, very accurate world War II Club mobile from the American Red Cross from Oh wow. Where they'd roll up on the battlefield and serve donuts and coffee to to the, the soldiers. And, you know, it's a fascinating subject. Yeah, it's very cool. But it's one 35th scale and everything I've been pouring over plans and. Oh, tearing up the internet, trying to find the minimal pictures that that exist to be able to 3D model this appropriately and then print it out and bring a big diam out of it. So I say, you know, relax. It's mostly relaxing. I really enjoy it, loves it. There are times when I want to tear my hair out, as you might imagine, but you know, that's all. That's all hobby fun. If you're not mad at it, sometimes you're not doing it right. That's

Roman Trebon:

right, exactly. I love it. That's right. I love it. You ready for one big question, Kev?

Kevin Metzger:

Yeah, why don't we get into it? So, Jake, when passionate community feedback conflicts with data-driven product metrics, how do you decide which voice guides the roadmap? Yeah, I think

Jake McKee:

that's a really good question and I think it, it's hard to answer simply, so you gotta, you gotta bear with me on this one a little bit. So there's a, there, there may not be real distinction between what the passionate customers are saying and what the data's telling you. And I think that that often. This is where if I, my wife and I'm really angry'cause I had a bad day. She reacts to my anger. With anger. I kind of, you know, I don't know, I just get more angry. Right? But there's something wonderful about saying, when, when she says to me, Hey, you, you seem really, how's your day? You doing all right? Can I give you a hug? Right. Like, it's just, it's, it's, I think there's, there's a lot of that that goes on when we start talking about passionate customer. Passionate customer, to really first and foremost understand what's below the surface on why they're. Giving that particular feedback positive and negative, right? People tend to, you know, accept the positive much quicker than they do the negative in, in some ways. But also, you know, when you say positive, it's sort of like our own human connections, right? When somebody says something good about you, it tends to bounce off a little bit more than when they say something negative and that really sticks with you, right? First and foremost is really understanding what's the dynamic of those passionate customers. And this is where, you know, your community team or your community professionals will come in very handy because they can often translate and interpret some of that feedback. And I think that that not enough of that happens before we start to compare it with the data pieces. By the same token you know, data is its own tricky beast because. Just because it's data doesn't mean it's, it's valid for consideration or even fully valid for consideration just because you have something that says, you know, African American medical patients seek less care. Well, how do you interpret that? Does that mean they're more healthy or does it mean that they have a harder access generally speaking to, to care? That there's some biases in the healthcare system that influence them, and you're really trying to make sure that you are being more data driven with your qualitative and more. Qualitative with your data I think really is a, is a good place to start understanding both of those things. The second part of the answer though is, okay, so you've, you've kind of this apart, you understand the data a little better. You understand where some of the holes in the data might be, and you're starting to plug those with knowledge from direct customer conversation and vice versa, and you've got a pretty clear picture. The traditional product approach has been fairly sequestered, right? Where we have bookends of collection upfront, where we collect all of our, our, our research, it's our requirement documents, you know, whatever it might be that we need to, to get in place before we go start the development process. We get our hands around that. We hug it real tight. We walk into the, to the product development. We kick the door shut, maybe lock it a couple of times, and then start working in dark. And every once in a while we might stick our head out and say, Hey, I need a little bit of feedback. But by and large, the product cycle happens inside that, that black box. Right. And then when we're done, we pop up and verification starts is what we built Functional? Is it good? Right. And there's a whole huge range. This is me as the community guy talking. I have my own biases on this, but I really believe that. That what happens there is we get that customer voice removed so far from that cycle, especially if those cycles are six months or a year or 18 months long, right? Which some of them can be you know, how are we keeping that voice and therefore that enthusiasm for solutioning in place throughout that development process. And I think that that's a process I call community driven product development and how we go about putting those kind of programs in place. And really back to your original question, how do we balance these two? You start to see it and feel it, right? You start to understand the data and the reasons why people might have responded with something on a survey. You might, you also using and en engaging with you and asking questions in certain ways over time. Not just a one-off, you know, feedback session, but you know, could be weeks or months that you have these folks involved. And I think, you know, I'm, I know I'm biased, but I think that's one of the best ways to, to find a. Reality to potential data inputs. Right? And, you know, how do you go about that? That's, you know, you can do small little programs, you can do longer time you know, six months, year long programs. Or you can do one-off sessions that last more than just a, you know, few questions worth, right? But, you know, whatever it is really thinking about your community mindset of, okay, if we're gonna listen to passionate customers, we gotta treat them. In the, in, in a relationship format, and we have to really connect over time to understand them a little bit more deeply. And then, and then it's to balance itself out and, and answers become clear as any other input of you know, any, any other thought right, that goes into these roadmap plannings.

Roman Trebon:

If you have a community that is such an amazing resource and it's so hard to get these that wanna build out these robust customer communities and it's, they don't have'em, right? Like, yeah, the community not there. And so if you have one and you, like you said, Jake, you can tap into it not just to get ideas, but the validate'em and bounce things along the way, and there's different approaches to that. It is such an amazing resource that how lucky and fortunate are those product teams where you can actually get real feedback Oh, absolutely. From people that are engaged, that care, that are invested and yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. Right. And I'll tell you there,

Jake McKee:

there's something. So yes to all of that. One thing that I will say is a very important distinction is we're not just talking about pulling folks from from making an active community base, right? Active customer community platform, and going to those folks. Kevin, you mentioned, you know, passionate customers and that could mean a whole bunch of things depending on what your company does, how you cater to them, right? If you're making drill bits for oil wells in the gulf. There's still gonna be somebody who's very passionate about that. You may not have tens of thousands of people in a active customer community, but there are gonna be some people who want to talk about it, who you need to hear from. You also need to balance out with other kinds of voices, right? Like finding the passionate customers. They may come from community platforms, they may come from other community programs and efforts you're doing, but they may also come from your customer. Success team goes, man, this guy is one of the smartest customers we've ever had, and he, we needed for his knowledge to come into, we're doing right. Our,

Roman Trebon:

our

Jake McKee:

first

Roman Trebon:

oil rig

Jake McKee:

drill

Roman Trebon:

bit shout out, which I love. Talk about a unique community. That's, I love it though. Like he said, Jake, there's probably one guy that probably all knows everything in the world about drill bits and, and you know, as he, he hasn't it. So ke do you have another follow up before we wrap up our Wednesday episode?

Kevin Metzger:

For the smaller communities or for those building that kind of community recommend like customer advisory boards and things like that. And how, how do you pulling to make sure you get the feedback and content. I have to give my,

Jake McKee:

my consultant disclaimer, that depends. There's a lot of, you know, que there's a lot of questions to ask before I can answer that particular question, but generally speaking, the answer I always give when somebody says, where should we start is, I say today in small right? I think there's far too much. Effort that gets put into trying to build a risk-free, professionalized, perfect platform. And I'll, I'll use my fingers when I say perfect, right? But some sort of perfect platform that will, immediately engage every potential person that might want to come join this community, immediately take off, and it'll immediately be important and impactful to everybody involved, including the company. That's not usually what happens. Right? The same way that I can't, I, I, if I'm smart, I'm not gonna meet somebody at a bar and asking to marry me that night and say, I love you by the time that drinks are are empty. Right. We've never been to this. You're not drinking the rough stuff. Yeah, clearly not. Or enough of it. But when we, you know, we're building relationships and so being able to find, you know, a handful of people to get smart first, right? This is all part of a community building strategy. How do you look at at super users? How do you start having customer conversations in a, and maybe a more community centric kind of way that isn't just give us feedback about the product, but give us feedback about the experience. Give us feedback about how you feel about us as a company. Give us feedback about. How much you want to connect with your peers. Oh, what do you want from them when you connect? Oh, that's cool. Well, let me start introducing some people around, right? Let me to go outta my way to say you like X and you like X. Why don't you guys meet? You know, let me, let me introduction. I. It can be as simple as that to start a, and again, I'll use my Coty Fingers, a community program, right? Or community process. That said, there's other times where a, a brand may have they may not have their own official brand community specifically for their products that they run as a company and that sort of thing, but there may be you know, places on Reddit that are very well trafficked, right? There may be, unofficial communities that are built up, how do you start participating there and, and listening and you know, showing up just like you would anywhere else? Right? Instead of blasting in and saying, I'm here, pay attention, I'm in charge. I'm the company. Right? How do you come in and say, Hey. I'm here. Do you mind if I sit down? Right. It is a very different dynamic, but I like the idea of starting now. There's always something you can do to learn more, to start building relationships, building connections and, and bridges to your, your customer base. And, and that can 50 different ways, including, you know, from a customer success standpoint, those folks talk to customers all day long. They want more connection. Typically, from what I've seen in my experience, those customer success teams want to do more. They want to do more with their customers. They wanna get their customers together with other customers, right? So. Can we do some of that manually before we get to a bunch of tools? Is there smaller tools that can facilitate some of those things? You know, these, these community driven development programs I use, i I built for, for companies often, we'll, we'll do it in their existing Slack, we'll do it on a private Facebook group just because. That's where all their customers are. And it's easier that way, right? It doesn't have to be big, huge, complex, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of implementation no matter what Salesforce tells you.

Roman Trebon:

Jake, awesome stuff. Thanks for sharing your insights on community driven development and, and how to into that community. So we're Hump Day is over. We're on the back half of the week. Jake's gonna join us Friday, Friday to explore experience designed again. We'll talk about how you don't lose in touch to our audience subscribes. You don't miss it. You'll get a notification on your phone. You'll know when we, when we drop the new episode. If you're enjoying joining this series, don't forget to share it with your colleagues. Give us a review and we will see you Friday. Until next time, Kevin, keep on.

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Kevin Metzger

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Roman Trebon

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Jake McKee

Guest