At PierShare, we consider trust and security to be of paramount importance. The dock rental process can have a lot of moving parts, and one of the central components of our customer service experience is leveraging the data provided by our users to proactively spot issues that may arise with certain dockings, as well as provide both boaters and dock owners the most efficient interface to rent a dock.

Trust

As a dock owner, renting your dock outside of our platform is a cumbersome and inefficient process that is fraught with security concerns. A fundamental guiding principle of PierShare is that any personal data that you input into our platform is never shared with third parties. This is much more secure than the alternative, such as classified ad sites, where the only way that interested boaters can get in touch with you is by calling or texting you or perhaps driving directly to your dock.

You may wonder then, how do boaters who are interested in renting your slip get in touch with you on PierShare, and how is that better than a simple phone call? We have built a streamlined inquiry system that allows boaters to fill out a short summary of their docking. This short form asks the boater when they plan to arrive, how long they plan to stay, precise details on their boat, whether they or their captain/crew are living or staying aboard, and how often they plan to access the dock once the boat is there. This system ensures that the most important information concerning a docking is captured so that you as a dock owner know what to expect. And this is more efficient for boaters as well, since they no longer have to cold call dock owners in an unstructured manner repeatedly. 

Security

After a boater submits an inquiry, dock owners are notified of the inbound request by text message and can pre-approve or decline the docking. As a dock owner gets an inquiry, they may view the dimensions of the boat, and our application automatically warns them if the dimensions of the boat are going to be a mismatch for the dock’s physical space given the depth of the water or bridges in the area.

If the dock owner pre-approves the docking boaters will be asked to upload their boat insurance information and a payment method as a part of our verification process so that we can move the docking to the next stage. Our verification system is designed to authenticate a payment method to prevent any fraud, and then seamlessly allow a boater to pay for the space using the payment method on file once they have visited the dock and want to commit to it. This system also gives dock owners confidence that that the boaters who inquire about their spaces are truly interested in docking and that the two individuals are a great match for one another!

Our Future Vision

The user privacy and verification system we currently have in place are far more advanced than any alternative currently offered in the marine industry. However, we have many exciting things planned in our pipeline to greatly expand upon trust and security. We plan to launch a mobile app that will make the entire docking experience even more seamless than it is currently through our platform, which will also allow greater security around communications between dock owner and boater as well as contextual awareness of users’ locations. This functionality will greatly assist in helping PierShare deliver on its big vision of fundamentally improving upon the experience of docking a boat.