All wise business managers pay attention to customer service, but it’s especially important in a relatively small community.

Their kids hang out with the customers’ kids, and maybe play hockey together or share school projects.

Tridon Communications has been in business in Fort McMurray for 22 years, and it believes in taking care of the neighbourhood – including big spenders and small ones.

“We have customers that have a couple of cellphones and maybe a wireless data connection, all the way to people who have literally thousands of communication devices on their sites,” says Wayne Taylor, vice-president of business development.

Tridon sells service and equipment, but it also buys products and the labour of others.

ABOVE: Tridon Communications executives, from left, Wayne Taylor (VP Business Development), Pat Boersma (President), Thorne Underwood (VP Technical Services) and Roger Ibbotson (VP and General Manager). BELOW: Tridon’s Fort McMurray headquarters.

“We’re very strong believers in participating in the community and giving back to the community,” Taylor explains.

“We make our utmost effort at dealing local ourselves because we believe that’s the only way we can expect others to deal with us.”

In Fort McMurray, Tridon is the leading locally owned independent supplier of communication equipment and services to northeastern Alberta. It was founded in 1981 by Pat Boersma and her husband Zeke.

They must have been doing something right. A year or so later, Alberta’s roaring energy boom collapsed amid the hated National Energy Program and plummeting world oil prices, but Tridon Communications weathered the storm.

Tridon was busy providing service to the existing oilsands plants, the gas and forest industries, and other local customers. Most of them are still clients today.

Tridon operates in a region consisting of thousands of square kilometres, where businesses and individuals need reliable, high-quality equipment so they can talk to each other and their headquarters, and move data around effortlessly.



Tridon built up its roster of suppliers, which now includes such names as Motorola, ATI, Wenco, Globalstar and LinCsat – all proven products for which Tridon is the authorized dealer.

Tridon also sells and rents all types of radio equipment, including a complete portable trunked radio system. These products are crucial devices for the area’s major oil and gas companies, mining, forestry and government organizations, and also contractors throughout the region.

Tridon is an authorized Telus Mobility Dealer and Customer Care Centre, which adds such services as cellular, paging, CDPD, 1Xrtt and MiKE.

Tridon’s customers, many of whom are technologically inclined, will often browse the Internet or attend a big-city trade show and stumble across a new gadget whose manufacturer touts it as an answer to practically every need. Then the client might call Tridon and ask about it.

Taylor likes to call these a “wonder-drug” type of product.

“We’ll try new things,” he says, “but we’re a little bit from Missouri on these things. We test it and make sure it does what it’s supposed to do, and then perhaps recommend, yes, this is a solution that will work for you.”

Or not. One manufacturer claimed a new piece of equipment had been tested and passed at all temperatures.

“Really? At 50-below?” Taylor wanted to know.

“They said: ‘Well, no, we didn’t think we’d need anything like that.’

The memory makes Taylor chuckle. “That’s one of the reasons we stick with the brands we do.

“Nine times out of 10 we go back to our healthy, bigger suppliers who supply products that you can depend on. Dependability is really the key.”

Tridon’s employees – 50 in Fort McMurray and three in Athabasca – also know their home turf. In the world of wireless devices and far-flung radio waves, reception can be finicky.

“It’s so dependent on the technicians’ knowledge of the area that you’re working in,” Taylor says, “because everything has an effect – trees in the way, a valley, a hill – local things that people who have worked with you in the area know.

“Someone coming in from outside doesn’t have the advantage of that experience, and oftentimes even inadvertently will give you the wrong information.”

That’s where the locally proven service comes in. The products are an important component, of course, but customers get the full package because Tridon services what it sells, including surveillance camera systems and evacuation alarm systems.

By dealing with a number of major, independent vendors, Tridon can recommend the ideal combination of technology and service to a customer, Taylor says.

“While we make every effort to make our vendors happy, really the person we work for is the customer. We have a large toolbox with many tools in it, so we make them available for the best solution to a particular problem.”

You can contact Tridon at webmail@tridononline.com or by phone at 780.791.1002.