I learned something about Dialpad while watching the Olympics on an airplane.
I was on a flight to meet with Dialpad’s design leaders, Austen Ezzell and Wyn Merchant, to talk about our upcoming brand refresh. I started watching Olympics highlights and got caught up in a story about a long jumper, Tara Davis-Woodhall, who made the jump of her lifetime while her husband, Hunter Woodhall, cheered her on from the stands. When she won Gold and leapt up into Hunter’s arms, his elation was obvious. Then we learn that Hunter is himself a paralympic athlete, and he goes on to win gold, this time with Tara cheering him on.
It’s a lovely story. And sitting there on the plane soaring above the Sierras, I thought:
Yes. That’s it.
When I became Dialpad’s CMO last fall after serving for five years on the board, one of my first goals was to revisit how we talk about what we do. Not just the products and the Ai breakthroughs, but the why behind it all. What do we actually mean to the people who use our platform? Why does Dialpad matter?
We’ve been building Ai into our products since 2018, long before generative Ai became an industry fad, and then the industry standard. But as Ai flooded the market, the conversation around it too often became impersonal, abstract, even intimidating.
What we do with Ai is different. Dialpad isn’t about replacing people—we’re about supporting them. We’re about real-time insights that give customer-facing teams the knowledge and confidence they need to shine.
Customer support is hard work. You’re dealing with pressure, complexity, even hostility. But as Studs Terkel wrote, “Most of us are looking for a calling, not a job.” In customer interviews we keep hearing the same thing: Dialpad helps agents feel less burned out and managers feel more effective. As one customer told us, “Ai takes the manual work off our plates so we can focus on being human.”
And watching that Olympic clip, it all clicked: our brand is about the people behind the people—the support agents, sales managers, team leads, and everyone whose job it is to help others succeed.
As it turns out, our CEO, Craig Walker, talks about coaches all the time—Bill Walsh, John Wooden, the chef on The Bear who mentors the hero about perfectly cooked chicken. The idea was already woven into Dialpad’s DNA. We just had to bring it to the surface.
Designed for connection
Once we had our idea, bringing it to life was a joy. Under Austen and Wyn’s leadership, the design team took a fresh look at our visual system, from logo to color to illustration, with an emphasis on being more approachable.
We opened up our color palette and found warmer, more vibrant hues, which we added to our color gradient to make it (as Austen explained it) “a sunrise that’s always anchored to the bottom of a frame, so it always represents what we can help people accomplish.”
We took the same approach to the rest of our visual system. Dialpad typography had always been a very strict Archivo. Now we introduced Serif and San Serif variants of Seasons, which is a friendlier, more creative font.
Magi Morales on our design team began sketching illustrations that were warm, human, and inviting. We wove these hand-drawn elements throughout the Dialpad product and our social presence, reflecting not just our technology but the people it’s built to help.
Then there was the logo itself. We’ve updated our logo several times in the past decade to reflect Dialpad’s evolving focus, from voice communications to messaging and finally Ai.
Those themes still apply, of course, but we felt it was time for an evergreen design based on our core principles of communication and connection. The new logo garnishes the Dialpad name with a simple sparkle of the negative space formed by thought balloons —a subtle symbol of connection that’s simple but deeply grounded in who we are, and designed to grow with us as technology and behaviors continue to evolve.
How to speak Dialpad
We also revisited how we name and talk about our products, moving away from jargon and technology and toward people and clarity. Dialpad Support. Dialpad Sell. Dialpad Connect. Our language reflects what Dialpad helps you do.
You’ll notice all these new elements across the entire Dialpad experience; the new visual and written identity now appears in our website, app, product UI, and even our documentation. It’s cohesive, modern, and people-first—and all in service of building more accessibility and customization into our design language and app experience so we can do a better job of supporting agents and supervisors.
We’re still deeply committed to innovation. We’re still pushing the boundaries of what real-time Ai is capable of. But now we’re telling that story with a bit more warmth and humanity. Because at the end of the day, Ai isn’t the hero—you are. The support agent who stays calm under pressure. The sales manager who trains a new rep. The team lead who turns feedback into motivation.
That’s who we built Dialpad for. That’s who we’re here to support, to lift up, to empower.
Here’s to the coaches.
