Press release

For immediate release, 14 September 2026. Free to republish in full or in part with attribution to Good CX and Half Time Orange. Images, spokesperson biography and the full paper: goodcx.co.nz/research/silence-of-the-system/media

Eight in ten leaders collect customer feedback. Two in ten can act on it. New research says the reason is biological.

A study of 123 senior leaders across New Zealand and Australia finds the barrier is not process or intent, but whether a leadership team is in a physiological state that can receive difficult information at all.

Auckland, 14 September 2026. Most New Zealand and Australian businesses are collecting customer feedback they cannot act on, and the reason is not the one their boards think, according to research published today by Auckland customer experience practice Good CX with diagnostic partner Half Time Orange.

The Silence of the System finds that 82 percent of senior leaders gather customer feedback, while only 23 percent have a clear process to act on it. Of the remainder, 59 percent act inconsistently and 18 percent have no customer signal reaching them at all.

The gap also widens sharply with scale. Inconsistent action rises from 27 percent in small firms to 55 percent in firms of 51 or more staff. Asked what stops them, 63 percent of leaders cite time and competing priorities rather than belief, making the problem operational rather than attitudinal.

“The listening happens. The closing does not. And it is not a lack of will,” said Liz Pinfold Reed, founder of Good CX and the paper’s lead author. “The same piece of customer feedback lands as useful or as a threat depending on the state the leadership team is in when it arrives. A mobilised team has less capacity to receive it. That capacity is measurable, and it is trainable, which is the good news in this paper.”

An explanation drawn from neuroscience, not management theory

The paper’s central argument departs from conventional customer experience research. Drawing on Stephen Porges PhD’s Polyvagal Theory, the science of safety and threat, and Yale neuroscientist Amy Arnsten PhD’s work showing that stress hormones impair the prefrontal cortex, it argues that most workplaces are locked in mobilisation, the sympathetic fight-or-flight state.

In that state, the brain region responsible for complex judgement is measurably compromised. Difficult customer information arrives as threat rather than as intelligence, and the organisation’s capacity to receive it falls. A leader’s nervous system, the paper argues, sets the weather for everyone below them.

The finding carries a direct implication for artificial intelligence investment. “A mobilised organisation with faster tools is simply mobilised at speed,” the paper states. Adding processing power to a business that cannot digest what it already hears does not close the gap; it widens it.

The silence appeared inside the research itself

Partway through fieldwork the researchers found the phenomenon they were measuring occurring within their own instrument. Leaders invited personally completed the anonymous diagnostic at 52 percent. Those arriving independently via the website completed it at 43 percent. Respondents hesitated at an optional email field despite guaranteed anonymity. The researchers redesigned the survey mid-sample in response.

“When 82 percent gather and 23 percent act, the listening is theatre,” said Brenton Webber, founder of Half Time Orange. “The signal arrives, and the system has no idea what to do with it.”

The cost is carried by the people closest to the customer

The research finds a consistent pattern of permission granted without preparation. While 51 percent of leaders say their people are empowered to improve customer experience, only 23 percent say those people have received any customer experience training. Sponsorship shows the same shape: 61 percent of larger firms report executive sponsorship for customer experience, while 13 percent run a standing governance forum where customer decisions are actually owned.

Measurement is the weakest condition in the study, with 31 percent of organisations not measuring customer experience at all.

Other research has already established the commercial stakes. Forrester’s 2025 research on brand and customer experience reports revenue growth of up to 3.5 times for firms that improve both together.

Ezra Henry, Customer Experience Lead at Chorus NZ, said of the findings: “The challenge is not usually a lack of customer insight or people wanting to do the right thing. In a large and complex organisation, the harder part is making sure what we hear from customers translates into clear decisions, ownership, and action, so customer understanding becomes part of how we work, rather than relying on a few people to keep pushing it.”

A diagnosis with a remedy attached

The paper sets out the Crossing Model™, which positions leadership as the keystone between employee and customer experience; the AFAR Framework™, a measurement layer tracking affinity, advocacy, frequency and recency as early indicators of relationship drift before revenue registers it; and six practical interventions, beginning with replacing executive sponsorship with named governance and treating psychological safety as a measurable condition rather than a mood.

The Silence of the System is available without charge at goodcx.co.nz/research/silence-of-the-system. The diagnostic remains open for its next wave, and participating organisations receive their own readiness report.

Notes to editors

Methodology. Half Time Orange’s Orange Zest readiness diagnostic, completed by 123 senior leaders across New Zealand and Australia between April 2025 and March 2026, with a further 17 international respondents bringing the total study to 140. This paper reads the New Zealand and Australian findings only. Participants span founders, leadership, management and specialist roles across organisation sizes. The sample is self-selecting and should be read as patterns within an engaged population of leaders already thinking about customer experience, rather than as a national average. We rounded figures. Base sizes vary by question, from n=61 to n=123. The diagnostic measures perceived conditions and operating signals; it does not directly measure commercial performance, customer outcomes or psychological safety.

Contributing experts. Liz Pinfold Reed (strategic insight and Polyvagal-informed lens), Brenton Webber (diagnostic and research lens), Craig Manning (commercial lens), James Brosnahan (systems lens) and Anthony Prajogo (future of work lens).

Trade marks. The Crossing Model™, DISTIL™, the OPEN Method™ and the AFAR Framework™ are proprietary frameworks developed by Good CX Ltd. Autonomic Agility® is a registered trade mark of Michael Allison, used with permission. Good CX is a member of the Research Association of New Zealand.

About Good CX. Good CX is an insight-first customer experience and leadership practice based in Auckland. It works on how organisations behave under pressure, and on the conditions that allow customer and employee experience transformation to land. Led by Liz Pinfold Reed. goodcx.co.nz

About Half Time Orange. Half Time Orange works at the diagnostic layer of customer experience, where customer ambition meets organisational reality. Its Orange Zest and Blood Orange diagnostics show leaders whether customer intent can travel through a business into ownership, decisions and follow-through. Led by Brenton Webber. halftimeorange.co.nz

Media contact. Good CX: media@goodcx.co.nz. Half Time Orange: Brenton Webber, brenton@halftimeorange.co.nz.

Interviews and assets. Liz Pinfold Reed is available for interview and comment. High-resolution photography, downloadable graphics and the full paper are available on the media page.