BUSINESSES in Worcester have been handed out awards for customer service following a mystery shopper survey.

100 city centre employees attended the Worcester BID Customer Service awards at the Guildhall to find out how they fared.

116 mystery shopper assessments were carried out on businesses willing to take part with the Royal Bank of Scotland winning the Business of the Year.

The bank in St Nicholas Street also won the professional services prize after scoring 100 per cent in the assessment.

Jennifer Butler, branch bank manager, said: "We are delighted with the result and to be acknowledged for delivering excellent customer service.

"As a team we pride ourselves on how well we help our customers, both new and existing.

"This award highlights how important customer service is, and how we at the Worcester branch aim to deliver high standards on a daily basis."

Other winners included the Cardinal’s Hat, in Friar Street for food and drink, Apparicio Hairdressing, in Pump Street, for health and wellbeing and Tudor House Museum in Friar Street for attraction.

Scaiff LLP, in Foregate Street, won in the telephone category while CrownGate shopping centre’s management team won for email.

Embrace in Reindeer Court won independent business, The Hive in Sawmill Walk was service provider winner and the Body Shop in CrownGate won the multiple retailer category.

The assessments also found that performances for Worcester’s businesses in retail and email were improving and that overall the city continued to perform very strongly.

Food and drink outlets were also praised for their work on greeting customers on arrival, the quality of the food and the professional conduct and standards of dress for their staff.

Adrian Field, head of Worcester BID, said: "The results have once again been excellent and are something that we should be very proud of in Worcester as our clients and customers do appreciate it and it undoubtedly leads to better trade.

"We had 14 perfect scores out of the 116 assessments undertaken and so the winning businesses have performed extremely well."

This is the fifth time that the awards have been held in Worcester.