The best beta question is what did you do instead?

“Would you use this?” creates optimistic answers. “What did you do the last time this happened?” gives you a workflow, cost, workaround, and competing priority.

The follow-up I like is: what did you do instead when the product was unavailable, confusing, or not worth paying for?

That answer reveals the real competitor. Sometimes it is another tool. Often it is a spreadsheet, a friend, a search tab, or doing nothing. A beta is more useful when it reconstructs behavior than when it collects feature wishes.

What substitution surprised you most in user research?