How Princh made printing easier at Sutton Council Libraries
About Sutton Council Libraries
The London Borough of Sutton is an ambitious, resident focused borough in South London. The borough was formed in 1965 and was previously a part of Surrey.
There are eight library sites and three heritage buildings, serving 206,075 residents, as of April 2021.
In 2018 Sutton Council’s Cultural Services became the Lead Authority for The Library Consortium. The Library Consortium forms a collective of 20 authorities who utilise the same Library Management System, allowing access across all authorities’ catalogues for both physical and digital stock and sharing these resources to its one million members.
“Princh is very useful for customers, especially if they are not library members and need to print something urgently. It makes printing super easy and a lot quicker.”
Challenges
Before Princh, the libraries’ printing process was operated via PCs, however, payments could only be made in cash at the library kiosks system. This was particularly challenging during the pandemic as we wanted to move to a more cashless based service and conform to public health regulations, such as social distancing and hygienic equipment.
Princh provided us with the solution to move the printing and payment away from the kiosks and the PCs themselves. This then meant we were able to ensure safer conditions for our staff and customers, and we could localise how the printing service was provided.
Implementation
Princh set up all our printers and gave them location numbers. They then supplied all the relevant posters and paperwork along with the necessary user guides for our staff.
Access was provided to the system’s back office queues so that staff could monitor what was being printed and help with the troubleshooting. We have rarely had problems with Princh, but on the odd occasion there was an issue, we reached out to the Princh team and they responded effectively. Solutions to issues were presented timely, whilst also helping to advise our IT teams if the problem might be local.
Results
Princh supported the increase of footfall to our libraries. Customers now have a choice to use credit/debit cards for print payments whilst they are in our libraries. Customers don’t need to wait to use the PCs or queue to pay for their printing they can go into our libraries and print directly from their phone.
Princh has also lowered the cash handling within the library. This has been a powerful change as staff time can now be used to support customers instead of back-office counting cash. This has also allowed our team to invest less time in investigating any cash discrepancies.
The customer service provided by Princh Support is quick and responsive. Customers have also commented that if they are in a rush, they can print their document on the way to the library and pick up their printing on arrival making the whole process simple and efficient.