The Second City keeps the laughs coming—from anywhere—with Dialpad

Second City has been bringing laughter to audiences around the world for over 50 years. From Tina Fey to Stephen Colbert, a host of famous alumni have kickstarted careers with the comedy enterprise. To support its global network, Second City relies on Dialpad to connect employees and customers through a modern business communications platform.

Leaving old-school PBX behind

Second City’s original PBX phone system required an expensive third-party contractor to provision users, adjust settings, and perform updates. But with teams scattered worldwide, its IT team faced significant issues of scale.

Then, in August of 2015, Second City experienced a devastating fire at headquarters in downtown Chicago. Within hours, flames destroyed the organization’s data center and on-premises PBX.

Deploying a new system... In under five days

Second City’s move to Dialpad brought the organization one step closer to a pure cloud IT stack. Not only is Dialpad scalable and reliable, the platform also works on different devices including PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Now, Second City's team can communicate through any channel, like voice, texting and messaging, and video conferencing—something they couldn't have done through a traditional desk phone.

Dialpad's lightweight cloud architecture made it easy to provision users, spin up offices, and accelerate the change management process.

In under a week, Second City's IT team eliminated desk phones for good by provisioning Dialpad business numbers across tablets, laptops, desktops, and smartphones.

This one move instantly amplified the speed at which its teams could collaborate, all around the world.

Whether they’re traveling to a remote office in Los Angeles, or performing on stage in London, Second City employees can now extend communications beyond the workplace and onto any device. This location-independent work style has transformed day-to-day productivity.

Dialpad’s native integration with Google Workspace also provides rich context into recent emails, upcoming calendar events, and shared documents—right within the user interface.

Armed with a communications platform that syncs deeply with their productivity suite, Second City employees are now equipped to work from anywhere!