What Telegram Business is and where the bot fits in
Telegram Business is a set of features for people who handle clients in Telegram: greetings, quick replies, business hours and connectable chatbots. A chatbot replies to clients in your direct messages on your behalf, and you choose which chats it may answer in. A regular Telegram bot lives on its own and the client has to find it. A bot in Telegram Business comes to where the client has already written to you.
What you need to connect it
- A Telegram account with access to Telegram Business features. Telegram sets the access terms itself, and the current ones are shown in the app settings.
- A bot that can work as a business bot. A developer builds it: a mode for business bots is switched on in @BotFather, and the bot itself learns to read your messages and answer them.
- Materials for the answers: prices, schedule, address, common questions and the rules for when the bot should call you in.
- Access to an AI model (ChatGPT, Claude or Kimi) through your own API key, if you want the key and the bill to be yours.
How to connect it: the steps
- Create the bot and switch on the business bot mode for it in @BotFather. If a studio builds the bot, we do this ourselves.
- In Telegram open Settings, then Telegram Business, then Chatbots. The names may differ slightly between app versions.
- Enter the bot name and add it.
- Choose where the bot may answer: in all private chats except the ones you pick, or only in the ones you pick. That is your call.
- Test it in a trial chat: write from another account and see how the bot handles a price question, a booking and an unusual request.
- Set the handover rules: when the bot calls you in instead of answering itself. For example a complaint, a discount or a special request.
What the bot cannot do
- It cannot write first. The bot answers only in private chats where the client has written recently: under Telegram rules, within the last 24 hours.
- It does not know what you have not told it. Without the price list and schedule it cannot name them, so the materials matter most.
- It can make mistakes, like any AI. That is why in complicated cases it should hand the chat to you instead of guessing.
How to keep clients comfortable
- Say that an assistant is replying: a short note in the first message. It is honest, and in some countries the law requires it.
- Do not let the bot promise discounts, deadlines or guarantees without your confirmation.
- Leave the client a quick way to a human: the bot should be able to say it will call the owner in now.
Set it up yourself or order it
You can connect a bot with these steps yourself if you work with code and AI model APIs. If not, we build such auto-replies turnkey: we set up the bot, teach it on your materials and move it to your server and your keys. Tell us about your business and we will say how it would look.