Sonul Verdia to lead Mystery Shopping for Ipsos India

Ipsos, an independent global market research, has announced the appointment of Sonul Verdia to lead its Mystery Shopping Services. Verdia will report to Amit Adarkar, CEO, Ipsos India.

“Mystery Shopping has gained prominence from the marketer’s standpoint as it is an unbiased approach of measuring customer service and compliance standards. With organised retailing and buyers’ market, it covers a multitude of consumer touch points – brick and mortar, call centres, websites, social media, employees and competitors – to capture performance,” saidSonulVerdia, Executive Director, Ipsos Mystery Shopping.

Adarkar sees Verdia’s role as highly strategic, “Verdia comes with a rich and deep experience in providing counsel to marketers in some of the key competitive global markets covering service, appearance, in-store promotions and product placement.”

“The role of Mystery Shopping cannot be overemphasised. The assessment is independent, efficient and agile and provides marketers discovery and service improvement. Which means marketers have a better handle on ROI, which was earlier done basis guesstimates and rudimentary methods,” said Adarkar.

“Mystery Shopping is becoming more specialised now. Apart from the traditional methods of face to face, telephonic and online, it is being done using mobile apps, audio and video recording. Ipsos also provides web and live mystery shops, micro shops and experiential mystery shopping. There are dashboards, drill down analytics, hot alerts and customizable reports, all in real time for timely action,” added Adarkar.

Verdia joins from Bare International, where he was the managing director. In his eight years with the company, he held various positions. Previously, he was general manager, India, Middle East and Africa at Bare International.

Verdia started his career with American Express in 2000 and spent a decade across different departments of corporate customer services, risk management among others.

An alumnus of IE Business School, University of Madrid, Spain, Verdia holds a degree in Operations and Strategy. He also has a Master’s degree in Commerce from the University of Mumbai; and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and a Diploma in Software Engineering, from Aptech University.

Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has grown into a worldwide research group with a strong presence in key markets. With offices in 88 countries, Ipsos delivers insightful expertise across five research specialisations: brand, advertising and media; customer loyalty; marketing; public affairs research; and survey management.

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