KONE Digital Experience Centre in Pune brings digital customer experience into sharper focus for the elevator and escalator industry. Inaugurated on October 9, 2026, the facility demonstrates how connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI), data and digital platforms can support customer decisions across the building lifecycle. The important question is whether these capabilities can translate into more transparent service, fewer operational surprises and better outcomes for building owners and occupants.
The centre brings together KONE Studio, MyKONE, E-Link and a customer-centric Service Dashboard. The announcement describes an integrated customer environment, but the business case extends beyond technology demonstrations. It rests on whether digital information changes how customers make decisions and how service providers deliver on their commitments.
Why the KONE Digital Experience Centre Matters Beyond the Demonstration
Elevators and escalators are essential infrastructure whose performance shapes everyday experience. A dependable lift can be almost invisible to occupants; an unexpected outage can immediately affect accessibility, employee movement, visitor confidence and tenant satisfaction.
For building owners and facility managers, the challenge extends beyond equipment reliability. They need timely information, clear communication, predictable service and evidence that maintenance commitments are being met. Traditional processes can leave customers dependent on periodic reports or individual service interactions.
KONE’s Pune facility seeks to make its digital capabilities tangible. Customers can explore elevator configuration, project information, equipment status and service insights in one environment.
This matters because purchasing an elevator is not simply a product decision. It creates a long-term relationship involving installation, maintenance, operational continuity and lifecycle costs. Digital visibility can improve that relationship if it helps customers understand what is happening and what action is required.
KONE’s existing digital-service descriptions identify MyKONE as a customer portal for equipment, project and service visibility, while E-Link provides a central view of monitored equipment. These capabilities provide context for the new centre’s emphasis on connected service. MyKONE and KONE India monitoring solutions describe the respective offerings.
The distinction is important: making information available is the beginning of transparency, not proof of better customer outcomes.
KONE Digital Experience Centre and the Shift to Lifecycle Experience
The centre presents a broader view of the customer relationship than the initial equipment sale. Its demonstrations span design and configuration, project visibility, equipment monitoring and service management.
KONE Studio enables customers to explore and configure elevator solutions digitally. This can make design decisions more accessible and help buyers examine their options before finalising requirements. Its value depends on whether customers can understand relevant trade-offs rather than simply view different configurations.
MyKONE provides visibility across projects, equipment and services. Such access can reduce the effort involved in obtaining updates and coordinating stakeholders, provided the information is accurate, current and actionable.
E-Link supports visibility into equipment status and operations. A consolidated Service Dashboard brings service and operational insights together, according to the announcement.
The strategic shift is from treating installation and maintenance as separate transactions towards presenting them as connected stages of a longer customer journey.
Philippe Delorme, President and CEO of KONE Corporation, said: “It is great to see the Digital Experience Centre come to life in India. Being the first of its kind in the elevator and escalator industry in the country, the Centre gives our customers an opportunity to experience how digitalization, connectivity and AI are shaping the future of People Flow.”
— Philippe Delorme, President and CEO, KONE Corporation
The statement establishes KONE’s intent. It does not, by itself, establish how much customer effort will be reduced or how service performance will improve.
From Digital Visibility to Measurable Customer Value
The deeper implication is that connected-building technology should be evaluated through the decisions and outcomes it enables.
For a facility manager, knowing that an elevator has an operational issue is useful. Knowing its likely impact, the appropriate escalation route and the expected resolution time is more useful. Receiving a timely update that accurately reflects progress is more valuable still.
This progression distinguishes three capabilities: information visibility, operational response and customer accountability.
The first makes data accessible. The second turns data into coordinated action. The third connects that action to clear commitments and outcomes.
A digital service platform may support all three, but the release does not specify the precise automation, integration architecture or service workflows implemented through the Pune centre. It would therefore be premature to attribute particular predictive or automated capabilities to the facility beyond those expressly described.
Amit Gossain, Managing Director of KONE India, said: “Today’s inauguration of KONE’s Digital Experience Centre in India marks an important milestone in our digital transformation journey and our commitment to creating exceptional customer experiences through technology, data and innovation.”
— Amit Gossain, Managing Director, KONE India
He also said the centre gives customers a first-hand view of how digital technologies can create value across the building lifecycle.
For customers, the test is practical: does the experience make decisions easier, reduce avoidable follow-ups and clarify responsibility when equipment performance falls short?
For KONE, the opportunity is to connect digital capability with consistent service delivery. That requires operational processes, people and accountability to work alongside the technology.
The Competitive Benchmark: Three Levels of Digital Service
The centre can be assessed against three levels of digital service maturity.
At Level 1, suppliers provide digital visibility into equipment status, documentation, projects and service updates. This improves access to information but may leave the underlying service process unchanged.
At Level 2, connected information supports operational workflows, coordinated interventions and more consistent customer communication. Monitoring and customer portals can contribute to this level when service teams use them to act rather than merely report.
At Level 3, digital capabilities are linked to measurable customer outcomes. These may include equipment availability, reduced unplanned downtime, faster repair, lower customer effort and improved lifecycle economics.
KONE’s announcement demonstrates an investment in showcasing capabilities relevant to digital visibility and connected service. It does not supply sufficient evidence to establish the centre’s impact against Level 3 outcomes.
A fair comparison with other elevator manufacturers and service providers would require equivalent information about installed-base coverage, system interoperability, customer adoption, service performance and total cost of ownership. Without such evidence, declaring a market leader would be unsupported.
For enterprise buyers, the useful question is not which supplier has the most impressive demonstration. It is which supplier can prove that its digital service model improves the outcomes that matter to a particular building.
What the Technology Must Deliver
The centre brings together several interfaces and information sources. Their value depends on how reliably they support the customer journey.
Digital configuration can improve early-stage decision-making. Project visibility can help owners coordinate installation and handover. Equipment monitoring can give facility teams a clearer operational picture. Consolidated service insights can make supplier discussions more evidence-based.
However, an attractive interface cannot compensate for incomplete information, inconsistent updates or unclear responsibility for corrective action.
The release identifies AI, connectivity and data-driven insights as important enablers. It does not disclose the specific AI models, data architecture, integration standards or performance benchmarks used in the centre. Those details should be established through technical due diligence rather than inferred from the announcement.
Interoperability is especially important for buildings that combine equipment and services from multiple vendors. Customers should understand what data can be accessed, how it can be shared with authorised systems and what happens when a service contract changes.
Cybersecurity, access controls, data retention and platform continuity also deserve attention. These are standard evaluation criteria for connected infrastructure, not allegations about KONE’s systems.
The technology succeeds when information is dependable, understandable and connected to an effective operating process.
CX Maturity Depends on Outcomes, Not Screens
The announced proposition suggests progress towards connected visibility and service enablement. A stronger maturity assessment requires evidence that customers use these capabilities and obtain measurable benefits.
Relevant measures include equipment availability, unplanned downtime, mean time to repair, first-time fix rate, response-time compliance, repeat complaints and customer satisfaction. Customer effort and the time required to obtain a service update can reveal improvements that equipment metrics alone may miss.
Building owners should also examine lifecycle cost, including maintenance expenditure, administrative effort and the financial consequences of disruption.
These indicators need a baseline. A pilot should compare performance before and after adoption, account for relevant operational differences and distinguish measured outcomes from customer perceptions.
The centre could help customers understand the proposed experience before making procurement decisions. Its longer-term value will depend on whether that understanding leads to better adoption, clearer expectations and improved service governance.
Build, Buy or Partner: What Enterprise Buyers Should Decide
Building owners do not necessarily need to create their own digital service platform. The appropriate decision depends on the complexity of their estate and the outcomes they seek.
Buy when a supplier’s existing tools provide sufficient visibility, service workflows and documentation. Contractual commitments, access rights and ongoing costs should be clear.
Build when specialised requirements justify custom analytics, workflows or integration capabilities that standard tools cannot provide. The decision must account for engineering resources, maintenance and long-term ownership.
Partner when multiple systems must exchange data or coordinate work across equipment suppliers, facility-management providers and building platforms. Integration responsibilities and data access should be agreed in advance.
The principal risks include vendor dependency, inconsistent data, cybersecurity exposure, weak adoption and the possibility that digital reporting improves without service execution improving.
A sensible approach is to define the business problem, establish baseline metrics, test the proposed workflow in a representative environment and agree on measurable acceptance criteria before expanding deployment.
What the Industry Should Watch Next
KONE’s Pune centre puts the customer-facing dimension of digital transformation into focus. Its significance lies in making the relationship between physical infrastructure and digital service more tangible.
The wider industry challenge is to move beyond connectivity as a feature and establish it as a dependable foundation for service quality. That requires technical capability, trained employees, interoperable systems and clear commitments to customers.
For KONE, the next evidence to watch is customer adoption and operational performance. For building owners, the opportunity is to ask more precise questions about transparency, accountability and lifecycle value before choosing a supplier.
The centre also highlights an important principle for industrial CX: the end user may experience the outcome of a technology without ever seeing the technology itself. A tenant benefits from a functioning elevator, a facility manager benefits from a timely service response, and an owner benefits when operational uncertainty and avoidable costs decline.
The Bottom Line: Prove the Experience
The KONE Digital Experience Centre provides a platform for customers to explore connected elevator solutions, digital configuration, lifecycle visibility and service insights. It signals an effort to bring technology closer to customer decisions.
The next step is proof. Customers should look for evidence that these capabilities reduce effort, strengthen service accountability and improve equipment performance. KONE should measure success through adoption, service outcomes and lifecycle value rather than demonstrations alone.
Ultimately, the KONE Digital Experience Centre will matter most if it helps transform connected-building data into a more transparent, predictable and accountable customer relationship. That is the standard against which digital CX in the built environment should be judged.
