The organization
Zillow Group operates some of the most recognized brands in residential real estate, serving consumers who are shopping, buying, and selling homes, as well as real estate professionals who support those transactions. The company’s vision is to help buyers move into their next home and next chapter in life by removing friction from the home‑buying process.
Zillow's contact center operations include over 1,000 seats, with agents supporting home buyers and real estate agents across the United States.
Motivation for change
As Zillow grew and acquired new businesses, its Workforce Planning team faced increasing operational complexity. The contact center environment included operators and leaders who were new to the space, alongside stringent state and federal licensing requirements—especially for loan officers, who could hold up to 14 different licenses each. The team needed to move beyond reactive "order taking" to build a more strategic, analytics-driven workforce management practice that could handle:
- Complex scheduling that respected licensing constraints across multiple queues and regions
- Time-off approvals that maintained coverage and compliance
- Long-range capacity planning and real-time management at scale
Why Aspect
Zillow selected Aspect Workforce™ for its superior forecasting capabilities and depth of functionality. After evaluating multiple WFM solutions, Aspect stood out by delivering:
- Stronger, more flexible forecasting to align staffing with demand
- Multi-channel support for a complex contact center environment
- Deep configuration and control to optimize rep utilization, not just fill shifts
- Embedded licensing and regulatory rules directly into scheduling and time-off workflows
Working closely with Aspect, Zillow's team incorporated licensing requirements into their workforce planning models, enabling more confident and efficient time-off approvals without risking coverage or compliance.
“We chose Aspect mainly for the forecasting strength… It was just the depth by which we can use the tool versus some of the competitor tools that do similar but not great things.”- Stephen Schmidt, Director of Workforce Planning, Zillow Group
The results
Smarter scheduling with licensing and time off built‑in
Zillow worked with Aspect to embed licensing and regulatory rules directly into their workforce planning models.
Now, Aspect helps the team:
- Incorporate licensing requirements into scheduling and time‑off workflows
- Understand how each time‑off request affects multiple licensed groups
- Approve time off more confidently and efficiently, without risking coverage or compliance
“Aspect's been working with us, especially around time off management and resource management, to incorporate licensing into our models and our scheduling… and find solutions to the time‑off management process.” - Stephen Schmidt, Director of Workforce Planning, Zillow Group
Better visibility through data and analytics
To transform WFM into a more strategic function, Stephen’s team needed better access to data and the ability to use it across internal systems and dashboards. Aspect Performance™ provides Zillow with a WEM dashboard for supervisors and managers to monitor agent performance, track KPIs, and assign coaching, ultimately improving agent performance and providing a single desktop for necessary data
Aspect allows Zillow to:
- Pull performance and workforce data from the WFM platform
- Use that data in both Aspect visualizations and homegrown dashboards
- Combine rep performance metrics with workforce management data in unified scorecards
“We want to incorporate not just the rep performance data in their scorecards, but also the workforce management elements into it.” - Stephen Schmidt, Director of Workforce Planning, Zillow Group
The value of partnership and support
Stephen describes the partnership with Aspect as balanced and responsive. An engaged account manager meets regularly to understand goals and challenges, while technical experts join when deeper configuration or troubleshooting is needed. Zillow leans heavily on Aspect support, submitting tickets almost daily—not just for issues, but also to explore better ways of doing things.
He also highlights a significant shift in how Aspect handles feedback. Today, the team hears back more consistently, including from product, and even when a request cannot be addressed immediately, there is clear acknowledgment and follow-up.
“The response time has been great… They may not have a solution right away, but they're at least letting us know the status of the ticket, when we can expect resolution, and what other resources we might need.” - Stephen Schmidt, Director of Workforce Planning, Zillow Group
Looking ahead
Over the next 6–12 months, Aspect and Zillow's Workforce Planning team are focused on continuing to build a strategic partnership. Zillow's Workforce Planning team is focused on bringing automation and AI into both contact center operations and WFM, designing experiences so customers do not always need to contact the center. Aspect is a key part of that transformation, helping the team automate day-to-day mechanics so planners can spend more time on the "why" behind the business.
"Diving into the training material, the Aspect community, talking to other users… will enable you to be a better operator within the system and really be able to utilize that depth to the success of your company."— Stephen Schmidt, Director of Workforce Planning, Zillow Group
