Helen Turner

Helen graduated from the London School of Economics in 1969 with a BSc in Economics, specialising in Industry and Trade. She entered the market research world as a graduate trainee for Gillette at a time when they ran their own field force of auditors and interviewers. She moved from there to Spillers and worked on the full range of products including flour, Homepride and pet food. From there she moved to Van den Berghs working chiefly on margarine and white fat products, which included work on Flora, Crisp 'N' Dry and Krona, as well as new product development work of various kinds. Her final client-side move was to Kimberly Clark as Consumer Market Research Manager. This involved work across all product fields in both the UK and internationally, and included work on Kleenex and Kotex products. New product development was always under consideration and she was actively involved in the launch of Kleenex Travel Tissues and Kleenex Velvet Toilet Tissue.

Helen joined Synovate in 1998 in order to widen their client base into new markets and developed various new areas as a result. She encouraged the agency to follow the quality route, culminating in ISO 9001 and IQCS accreditation. She developed the mystery shopping element of the agency's work, working with such clients as Post Office Counters, Royal Mail and Going Places. Helen has been involved in many forms of research, across a wealth of markets: financial, FMCG, Government research and service industries. She has particular experience of customer satisfaction surveys, product testing, hall tests, mystery shopping, international and self-completion work. She is an active member of the research community, being a Fellow of MRS and a member of its Market Research Standards Board. She has chaired working parties to review and update the MRS and ESOMAR Guidelines on Mystery Shopping and recently wrote a chapter on Mystery Shopping for the ESOMAR Handbook. She is now involved in conducting Quality audits and helping agencies with their Quality systems, as well as undertaking various training roles.