How to put an AI chatbot on Telegram for your business

A Telegram bot is a separate Telegram account that your business owns. Parents open a chat with it, and an AI assistant answers them from the information you give it.

You also need a ChatPal account; the free plan needs no card. Your first sign-in creates an assistant and opens a Setup page that drafts its instructions and welcome message from your website. Click Skip for now and you write both yourself on the Configuration page in step 3.

What a Telegram bot can do for a business

Most messages to a tutor are a handful of questions: how much is a session, is there a Saturday slot, do you teach the IB syllabus, what happens if my son is ill.

• Answer from your information. Fees, subjects and levels, timetable, location, cancellation rules: whatever you upload or link in step 3. It reads each question together with the earlier messages in that chat, so a short follow-up such as "and on Saturdays?" is understood. It answers in the language the parent writes in, whatever language your document is in. Test it in each language your parents use.
• Book sessions. With Google Calendar or Calendly connected, it offers the free times as Telegram buttons under the message, and the parent taps one instead of typing. The Google Calendar page explains the setup. Only one booking integration can be active per assistant.
• Take a phone number in one tap. When a Google Calendar booking needs a number, the parent can press Share my phone number instead of typing it. It's used to find the booking if the parent later moves or cancels it.
• Hand a chat to you. When a parent asks for a person, the chat appears in the Handed off to a human view of Chats and you reply from there (step 5).

And what it can't do:

• It works in private chats only. It doesn't answer in groups or channels.
• It can't send the first message. A parent has to open the bot and press Start.
• It reads text and photos. A parent can send up to 4 photos per message, 10 MB each, and the assistant answers from the photos together with the caption. Voice messages, audio, video and stickers get no reply at all. The exception is the contact a parent shares with the Share my phone number button. Many parents send voice notes, so say in your welcome message (step 3) that they should type, and give your own number for anything urgent.
• It doesn't take calls, so a parent who wants to talk needs your own number. ChatPal doesn't cover Viber either.

Step 1: create the bot in BotFather

BotFather is Telegram's own bot for creating and managing bots. You need only a Telegram account; there is no business verification and no Meta account.

1. In Telegram, search for @BotFather and open the chat.
2. Send /newbot.
3. Type the display name parents will see, for example "Harbour Tutoring".
4. Type a username. It has to end in "bot", be 5 to 32 characters, and use only Latin letters, numbers and underscores, for example harbourtutoring_bot.
5. BotFather replies with a token, a long string that looks like 123456789:AAF.... Copy it.

The token is what authorizes requests for the bot, so keep it private and paste it only into ChatPal.

Step 2: connect it in ChatPal

1. In the ChatPal dashboard, open Integrations in the left navigation and choose Telegram.
2. Click Connect Telegram Bot.
3. Paste the token into the Telegram Bot Token field and click Save.

ChatPal checks the token and registers the bot's webhook itself, so there is nothing more to set up in BotFather. The page then shows the bot's picture, name and @username, which is how you know the right bot is linked. If ChatPal rejects the token, copy it again from BotFather without spaces or line breaks.

Step 3: give it your information

Open Configuration in the left navigation. On the Attributes tab, click Set Instructions and describe the assistant's role in a couple of sentences, for example: "You are the booking assistant for Harbour Tutoring. Answer only from the fees, timetable and policies you're given."

Now give it what to answer from. On the Files tab, click Upload files to add a PDF, Word or plain-text document. On the Links tab, click Add Link and paste your website's address. Each file or link is marked Ready once the assistant can use it. Wait for Ready before you test.

The document that works best answers the questions in the words parents use:

• subjects, levels and the curricula you teach;
• the fee per session, packages and how to pay;
• the timetable, online or in person, and the address;
• the trial lesson, and the notice a cancellation needs.

Read your test chats for questions the assistant answered badly or couldn't answer, and add what's missing to your document.

The same Attributes tab holds the Welcome Message, the first thing the bot sends when a parent presses Start. If the Setup page drafted one, read it; otherwise click Customize Welcome Message and write your own. Say there that typed questions work best, for example: "Hello! Ask me about fees, the timetable or a trial lesson. Please type your question: I can't read voice messages. For anything urgent, call [your number]."

Step 4: share the link

Go back to Integrations → Telegram, the screen from step 2. Once connected, it shows the bot's link under Telegram Link, with a copy icon next to it (hover text: Copy link). ChatPal builds it from the username you chose in step 1 and adds ?start=chat on the end automatically, so for harbourtutoring_bot the link reads https://t.me/harbourtutoring_bot?start=chat. Copy it as shown. Download QR code saves a QR code for the same link as an image.

Test it before anyone else sees it. Open the link yourself, press Start and ask ten questions parents actually sent you last month. Your tests count toward your monthly messages, so ten questions use ten of the free plan's 100. Each test chat appears in Chats, so you can read the answers and fix the document where one was wrong.

Then put the link on your website, in your welcome pack and in your channel's pinned post, and the QR code on a printed flyer. People can also find the bot by its @username in Telegram search.

When a parent opens the link, Telegram shows a Start button. Pressing it opens the conversation and the bot sends your welcome message; until then it doesn't answer.

Step 5: decide what goes to a person

Some messages should reach you, such as a complaint about a tutor or a request to change the fee. To let the assistant hand those over, open Configuration, go to the Settings tab and switch on Enable human-in-the-loop. It is off by default, and while it's off, a parent who asks for the tutor isn't handed over. With it off, the assistant offers the other contact details it has, or says it can't connect the parent to a person in this chat, so put your phone number or email in the document.

When a chat is handed over, you get an alert. The customer sees the message you set with Set Escalation Message (Configuration, Attributes tab), for example "A team member will be with you shortly." It is also sent once when you have paused auto-replies. From then on the assistant stays silent in that chat until you hand it back, so a parent waits until you reply, even overnight. Put your reply hours in the welcome message or the document from step 3, for example "We reply between 9 and 6." Email alerts work from the start. For alerts on Telegram, click your workspace name at the top of the page, choose Manage workspaces..., open the Notifications tab, click Connect Telegram and press Start in the chat that opens.

To reply, open the chat in the Handed off to a human view of Chats, click Take over, and type your reply. The parent gets it in the same Telegram chat. When you're done, click Return to AI and the assistant answers the next message.

To send a whole topic to you, such as complaints, click Add under Categories on the Settings tab, enter a Category name and Description, choose Human escalation and click Create. This needs Enable human-in-the-loop to be on.

For what Telegram looks like next to the other channels ChatPal answers on, see the Telegram chatbot page, and for message limits by plan, see pricing.

If you are still choosing a service, compare the options in AI chatbots for WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram.