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Creating a better resident experience starts with thinking smaller.
What does a resident need on an ordinary Tuesday? What could save them a trip, a purchase or a little unnecessary hassle? What’s one thing they’ll be glad is there the exact moment they need it? These are the kinds of details that make residents feel considered, cared for and a little more at home.
At Jefferson Arbor, a modern community managed by RPM Living that offers both apartments and single-family homes in fast-growing Anna, Texas, that kind of thinking is baked into the experience. Here, residents can choose the kind of home that fits their life, enjoy an elevated collection of amenities and settle into a community that considers what life looks like beyond their front door.
One of those conveniences is PrintWithMe, an on-site amenity that provides residents with secure, self-serve printing from their own devices, whenever they need it and without staff assistance. And nothing makes you appreciate a convenience quite like remembering the inconvenience it replaced.
Assistant Manager Charra Jones remembers the days before PrintWithMe well, because when residents needed to print something, the Jefferson Arbor team was their first stop.
“We were stopping what we were doing to print things for residents at least three or four times a day,” Charra said. “And sometimes, residents wouldn’t even come into the office. They’d just email us their documents and come pick them up later, so we’d end up with stacks of papers sitting around.”
A shipping label, schoolwork, paperwork for an appointment. But that’s not all. Sometimes, the documents landing in the Jefferson Arbor inbox were far more personal.
“Residents were emailing us private things like passport paperwork or court documents, which can be risky,” Charra explained. “I’m really good about deleting things in front of them and deleting them out of the deleted folder, but everybody’s not like that. PrintWithMe helps residents keep information they don’t want other people to be privy to private.”
Printing had become an unofficial service of the leasing office. A quick favor every now and then was one thing, but several requests a day had turned printing into a regular part of the team’s workload.
Between time spent waiting for a resident’s email to come through, resending documents, and the back-and-forth that sometimes followed, a single print request could easily take five or 10 minutes. At three or four requests a day, that was a meaningful amount of time going toward something residents ultimately just wanted to handle themselves.
And residents were making it very clear they wanted that independence. New move-ins were looking for somewhere to print almost as soon as they arrived, while demand for hassle-free printing was making itself known before move-in as well. Those conversations made the gap especially noticeable because Charra knew the next community on their list might have exactly what Jefferson Arbor didn’t.
“People would come in needing to print something or asking if we had somewhere they could print themselves,” Charra noted. “It was kind of embarrassing that we didn’t, especially when you’re touring prospects who may go somewhere else where the business center has PrintWithMe, or at least a printer setup.”
Jefferson Arbor didn’t have to wonder whether residents would value on-site printing. They were already making that pretty clear.
The answer wasn’t simply to add a printer. Jefferson Arbor needed to turn printing into the kind of amenity residents could confidently use on their own, prospects would be glad to see and the property team wouldn’t have to think twice about managing.
With PrintWithMe, the process that once ran through the leasing office became entirely self-serve. Residents could securely send print jobs from their own devices, pick them up without staff assistance, and, thanks to 24/7 access to the space, print whenever it fit their schedule.
“Having PrintWithMe was a really good source of convenience, not just for us so we didn’t have to stop our work, but also for the residents so they didn’t feel like they were interrupting or bothering anyone,” Charra said. “They can do everything at their own will.”
That simple shift, and PrintWithMe’s simplicity, gave everyone a little more breathing room. The community wasn’t looking to trade staff-assisted printing for a machine residents would struggle to use or the team would have to keep tabs on.
They wanted a solution residents could confidently use on their own and the team could confidently leave in their hands.
And just like that, printing stopped requiring a middleman. Those three or four daily requests disappeared from the team’s workload, residents gained the independence they’d been asking for and PrintWithMe found a natural place in life at Jefferson Arbor.
“It’s a one-stop shop,” Charra shared. “Residents can print Amazon labels, schoolwork, meeting notes, whatever they need to take care of.”
And a natural rhythm emerged as residents’ printing needs followed the flow of their weeks.
“We tend to see the most activity around the beginning of the week and in the mornings,” she said. “Sundays especially, it looks like people are shipping things out, catching up on what they didn’t get to during the week and preparing for the week ahead.”
For one resident, PrintWithMe became an especially important part of that routine. While attending nursing school, she regularly used Jefferson Arbor’s business center to study and get together with classmates, knowing she could print whatever she needed right there.
“To have printing available when she needed something on a whim was really great for her throughout her whole lease term,” Charra recalled. “It was a highlight for her to renew as well because she didn’t feel like she was going to be able to have that amenity somewhere else.”
From a reason to renew to a reason to lease, PrintWithMe has made its mark at both ends of the resident journey.
On tours, the printer has become one of those amenities that spark an immediate reaction. Some prospects come in already knowing how valuable on-site printing would be, while others spot the printer and light up over a convenience they didn’t have at their last community.
“I’ve had people during tours straight up ask me, ‘Do y’all have a printer?’” Charra said. “They know that’s what they need. I’ve also had people mention that they used to have to go pay for pages at FedEx and things like that.”
That excitement has been more than a nice moment on a tour.
“I didn’t necessarily expect people who are touring or moving in to get so excited when they see the PrintWithMe printer,” Charra added. “That’s something that has actually helped close deals for us.”
Meanwhile, the Jefferson Arbor team is getting something valuable back, too: time.
“PrintWithMe lets us keep working without having to stop for printing requests,” Charra said. “Even though printing seems like a small thing, each request could take five or 10 minutes, especially if we were waiting for an email to come through and going back and forth with the resident.”
And that may be the best way to understand PrintWithMe’s impact at Jefferson Arbor. Printing may be a small part of residents’ days, but making it easier has had an impact across the community, from everyday routines and staff workloads to tours, leases, and renewals.
“Even though printing seems like such a small thing, it brings a lot of value because it’s something other properties may not think about,” Charra said. “There can be thoughtfulness in the design of a community and in the amenities you offer, and PrintWithMe is one of those little things that shows residents you’ve really thought about how to make life more convenient for them.”
Resident printing shouldn’t require much from residents. And it definitely shouldn’t require much from property teams.
For multifamily communities, PrintWithMe combines resident facing convenience with the operational support of a fully managed apartment printing service. It makes on-site printing easier to use and easier to offer.
Residents can securely print from their own devices without downloading drivers, connecting to unfamiliar networks or handing documents over to the leasing office. The experience is simple and self-serve, giving residents an easy way to print what they need while keeping sensitive documents private.
And property teams get to stay out of the printing business.
With proactive monitoring, automatic supply fulfillment, and support available seven days a week, PrintWithMe takes care of the work that typically comes with managing a shared printer. No toner inventory to track. No resident troubleshooting to field. No service calls to coordinate. Just an amenity that’s there for residents without becoming another recurring task for staff.
At Jefferson Arbor, the payoff is exactly what Charra hoped for: residents have the freedom to print on their own terms, and staff have the freedom to focus on everything else.
Less time managing a printer. More time taking care of the people who call your community home. If that sounds like a better use of your team’s time, see what PrintWithMe can do for your community.
Interested in bringing WithMe amenities to your business? Please fill out the form!
