Marginally Better is a thought-provoking business podcast from Joe Taylor Jr., a Master Certified User Experience consultant and customer service veteran. It explores how investing in exceptional customer experiences drives sustainable growth and profitability.Join Joe as he explores the intersection of business performance and customer satisfaction, revealing how companies can achieve what seems impossible: improving their margins by investing in customer experience. Each episode explores triumphs and cautionary tales in customer experience, from industry giants to emerging disruptors. Through deep-dive analysis and compelling storytelling, Marginally Better examines how businesses navigate the delicate balance between innovation and customer needs in t...
Latest episodes
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55 min
Surviving Your Tech Career
I’ve had the rug pulled out from under my career (at least) twice. This is my survival guide for PIPs, layoffs and pivots, recorded live at BarCamp Philly 17.
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28 min
Your Next Customer May Never Visit Your Website
Cloudflare and the Crawl EconomyCloudflare - Control Content Use for AI TrainingCloudflare - Crawlers Click AI Bots Training DataCloudflare - Content Independence Day: No AI Crawl…
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20 min
What If Software Only Got Paid When You Succeeded?
For decades, software companies got paid the same way whether you succeeded or failed. You bought the licenses, you paid the bill, and if nobody at your company ever figured out ho…
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23 min
The Wrong Metric
The StopwatchCMS Provider Data Catalog — Hospitals: Timely and Effective Care (public reporting of ED time measures)The Joint Commission — ED-1: Median Time from ED Arrival to ED D…
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22 min
The Capacity Catastrophe
The Season You Saw ComingTIGTA — “The Internal Revenue Service’s Readiness for the 2026 Filing Season” (memorandum, Jan. 26, 2026: staffing down ~19,000/19% to October 2021 levels;…
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25 min
The Onboarding Opportunity
The Cost of a Bad First WindowFenergo — “Global Financial Institutions Struggle with Rising Client Losses and Compliance Costs as AI Adoption Increases” (2025 survey of 600 senior…
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20 min
The Forgotten Middle
The Gym: Paying Not to GoDellaVigna & Malmendier, “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” American Economic Review 96(3), 2006, pp. 694–719 (members on flat monthly contracts averaged ~4.3…
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21 min
The Review Revolution Reversal
The Research: Why Perfect Doesn’t SellNorthwestern University Medill Spiegel Research Center — How Online Reviews Influence Sales (purchase likelihood peaks at 4.0–4.7 stars; “five…
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20 min
The Hidden Cost of Disengagement
The Cost of DisengagementGallup — The World’s $8.8 Trillion Workplace Problem (State of the Global Workplace)Employee Experience Drives Customer ExperienceGlassdoor Research — The…
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24 min
The True Cost of Bad Customer Experience
What do a billion-dollar retail collapse, a broken app, and an abandoned shopping cart have in common? They’re all part of the same hidden bill, and most companies don’t realize th…
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25 min
The Repair Relationship Revolution
A century ago, companies deliberately made products that wouldn’t last. Today, that model is being dismantled—by regulators, by consumers, and by a new generation of businesses bui…
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21 min
The Community Currency
A productivity app on the brink of collapse rebuilt itself in a small apartment in Kyoto—and a decade later became an $11 billion company with 100 million users. What changed? Not…
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22 min
The Transparency Tax
Everyone says customers want transparency — open salaries, open supply chains, open decision-making. But when does sharing become oversharing? In this episode of Marginally Better,…
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23 min
The Senior Surge Opportunity
By 2030, all 73 million U.S. Boomers will be 65+—and they control the majority of household wealth. So why do so many products, stores, and apps ignore them? In this episode of Mar…
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23 min
The Waiting Game Winners
Americans spend 37 billion hours a year waiting—about 118 hours per person—but smart brands are turning that dead time into delight. In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylo…
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25 min
The Ghost Kitchen Customer Catastrophe
Ever ordered from three “different” restaurants and gotten the same fries, same sticker, same address? This episode of Marginally Better digs into the ghost-kitchen gold rush—and t…
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23 min
The Repair Renaissance
What if telling customers not to buy is the smartest growth move you can make? In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylor, Jr. explores the Repair Renaissance—from Patagonia’…
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24 min
Designing for Trust: Inside the Privacy Economy
Do customers really value privacy—or will they trade it for a coupon code? In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylor, Jr. unpacks the “privacy paradox” where 86% of people c…
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26 min
The Death of the Phone Call (And Why That's a Problem)
In a world where Gen Z would rather lose a finger than make a phone call, how do businesses keep real human connections alive? In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylor, Jr.…
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23 min
The Privacy Paradox
What do your customers really want: personalization or privacy? In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylor, Jr. explores the “Privacy Paradox” reshaping modern business. We’l…