There's not much to get wrong with J1772 / Type 1 charging. It tends to help to key the bike on before plugging in, and this charger seems intended to be plugged in before pressing "Start", but maybe you'd succeed by pressing "Start" first.
(Note for European / Type 2 users, plugging the charging station end of the cable before the vehicle end seems to make the negotiation work more reliably).
In general, some chargers are definitely implemented oddly (whether per vendor or by the specific way the electrician installed that station) and don't work for all types of vehicle.
A lot of cars just pull 3kW without working with the power demand getting negotiated properly.
J1772 signaling (proximity and control pilots) are described decently on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#SignalingIt sounds like the SRF got the proximity signal but maybe there was confusion about the control signal, and the SRF conservatively decided to demand no power. I'd say to check the vehicle logs, but Zero doesn't enable that for SRF owners.
There can also be issues like the station's safety features deciding that the vehicle isn't grounded properly, which can be an issue but I wouldn't guess it as a cause.
That's all I can guess.