Online forms and spreadsheet as means to support quality measurement by the SERVQUAL method

Purpose: The main purpose of the research is to devise and present a concept for a solution enabling integration of popular off-the-shelf online forms with a tool aligned with the MiRel concept used for quality measurement by application of the SERQUAL method. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis performed by the author comprised various possibilities of using standard features of popular online forms to store data for purposes of the SERVQUAL method. This involved identification of several potential layouts of the master table where the answers previously received are kept. The analysis concerned the data structure applied in the tool designed, as proposed in the literature, in accordance with the MiRel concept, to support the method in question. The elements identified in this structure were the attributes whose values should be entered directly and manually in tables as well as those whose values should be added automatically on the basis of the answers previously received. Solutions were developed to enable automatic data migration from the master table to the tool’s respective tables. Findings: The data required for purposes of the SERVQUAL analysis, supported by a tool created in a spreadsheet according to the MiRel concept, can be successfully stored by means of commonly available online forms. What proves to be problematic is the impossibility of verifying the correctness of the answers in terms of the relevance of individual dimensions, yet in this respect both the verification and potential adjustment of the answers received can be inherent in the mechanism responsible for data migration from the master table to the tool’s tables. A fully functional solution enabling data to be retrieved from the master table and moved to the tool’s tables can be developed using built-in spreadsheet features only, without the need for any code created in any programming language. Practical implications The solution proposed in the paper can be used in practice when measuring quality using the SERVQUAL method. Originality/value: The concept described in the paper is the author’s original solution.