Thanks to one of my friends, Rahul Sharma, for this, but I couldn't find a good article on this issue so putting my experience forward.
When trying to import an lcm backup of planning application, I got the above error. There was one more error saying the path specified for export was invalid when exporting. Something was definitely wrong with Shared services.
To resolve this error, first we need to check if the export folder, usually the import_export folder, is having proper read/write access.
If the issue still persists, run the Configtool utility and configure only common settings again, this time make sure that the path for export is correct. Restart all services again and you should be fine.
Regards,
NJ
