Service and soft-skills training is often approached as a one-size-fits-all exercise, yet Shivalatha Sivasundaram, Chief Executive Officer and Director at The Training Lab, argues that this conventional model rarely addresses the real challenges organisations face. Seeking to bridge this gap, she designed an adaptive, experience-driven programme based on data and repeatable outcomes.
In this conversation with Echelon, Sivasundaram discusses the environment that influenced The Training Lab, the rapid momentum it gained, and the principles behind her evolving approach to modern service excellence. She also shares why her approach has helped build her professional identity as The Service Architect.
Could you share what vision originally shaped the foundation of your corporate training company, The Training Lab, and the work you do today?
The Training Lab was founded on a simple belief: learning should be accessible to everyone, regardless of language, geography, or ability. I believe true inclusivity doesn’t mean lowering standards; it means adapting the way content is delivered. Being trilingual allows me to engage a wide variety of audiences in one session, including participants with different abilities, with the appropriate support.
I also wanted to move away from the typical lecture-style approach and create training experiences that are practical, activity-based, and genuinely memorable. That vision continues to guide my work today, ensuring every session is relatable, immediately applicable, and leaves participants confident to apply what they learn in their day-to-day roles.
The Training Lab has just crossed the two-year mark in its journey. How did you secure early traction so quickly, and what strategies proved most pivotal in building credibility within this period?
Securing early traction was all about quality, consistency, and measurable impact. From the start, I focused on targetted interventions in areas where results could be seen quickly, whether it was improving customer service, strengthening leadership, or enhancing team communication. When clients experienced real, tangible change, referrals and repeat business followed naturally.
Another pivotal strategy was curating a handpicked pool of trainers who share The Training Lab’s ethos. This ensured every programme, whether in Sri Lanka or overseas, maintained the same high standards from day one, building trust faster than any marketing effort could.
The Training Lab already works actively with the corporate sector in the Maldives and currently serves individual clients across the USA, Canada, Australia, Africa, Kuala Lumpur, and Malaysia, reflecting the strong global relevance and adaptability of our training interventions. In the coming years, we are accelerating our expansion strategy, driven by strong market demand and clear growth opportunities across the Middle East and South Asia. The long-term vision is to establish The Training Lab as a regional benchmark in service, leadership, and skills development.
With your evolving identity as The Service Architect, how do your methods distinguish you from traditional service-skills providers, and what gaps do you see in the way Sri Lankan organisations approach service training?
Many organisations still treat service training only as a matter of motivation or attitude adjustment. But in reality, service is a structured skill set, encompassing communication science, expectation management, digital behaviour, and emotional intelligence.
My approach blends service psychology, real-world activities, and conventional etiquette with modern elements like digital behavior and AI, because today’s customer interacts across multiple platforms. Training becomes practical, relatable, and measurable rather than theoretical or purely inspirational.
By introducing method, measurement, and hands-on practice, I shift service from being merely a “feel-good session” to a “business-critical skill” with tangible impact. The goal is simple: to prepare teams for the expectations of a modern, informed customer while equipping organisations with sustainable service frameworks.
Service is often seen as a frontline function. How does your “architect” approach shift responsibility to leadership, culture, and systems?”
Service has never belonged only to the frontline; it is a leadership outcome and a cultural design. Frontline staff may simply reflect the behaviours, clarity, and systems created by leaders as well. As a Service Architect, when a company tells me their service is slipping, I look beyond customer-facing touchpoints and examine the internal architecture that drives them: leadership alignment, team dynamics, interdepartmental collaboration, sales-to-operations communication, cultural signals, and even how performance is measured and rewarded.
True service excellence depends on how well teams work together, how seamlessly sales promises connect with operational delivery, and how consistently leaders model the behaviours they expect. My role is to help organisations design these interconnected layers, so every function — not just the frontline — becomes accountable for the service experience.
When culture, communication, and systems are aligned, great service isn’t something people struggle to deliver; it’s a natural by-product of how the organisation functions.
You’ve delivered to banks, logistics firms, hospitality, education, and even government institutions. How do you adapt to very different industries without diluting your core offering?
Two decades in banking gave me a front-row view of how service works, including where it excels and where it silently collapses. I’ve seen every form of pressure: customer expectations, compliance demands, sales targets, operational bottlenecks, and internal dynamics across organisations. This experience forms the foundation of my Service Architect persona.
While industries differ, the fundamentals of service like clarity, consistency, empathy, and execution remain constant. What changes are the examples, scenarios, and pace I use to connect with each audience. My banking background, combined with hands-on experience managing a diverse portfolio of clients, helps me quickly identify operational pain points and cultural signals, while adaptable delivery ensures relevance for diverse sectors including banks, logistics firms, hospitality teams, educators, or government institutions.
By maintaining core competencies while adjusting context, I ensure training is practical, measurable, and impactful, helping teams translate learning into sustained behavioural change. This approach keeps every session grounded in reality, not theory, and delivers results that truly stick.