Paste a token from Telegram’s own BotFather and the bot starts answering from your documents, in the same inbox as WhatsApp, Instagram and your website chat. There is no business review and no message template to get approved first.
7-day free trial. Connect a bot in a couple of minutes.
Answers from your documents
Catalogue, policies and FAQs
Works out budget and need
One question at a time
Sends the link, or books
Checkout, appointment or demo
Brings in a person
Same thread, full history
In one inbox:Website chatWhatsAppInstagramMessengerTelegramLINE
A Telegram chatbot is an account created through Telegram’s BotFather tool that customers message like a person, and HiQBot answers through it with the same AI agent that runs your other channels: it reads your documents, works out what someone needs, and sends a checkout link or books the next step.
It is also the quickest channel here to switch on. WhatsApp’s own Business API needs a verified business and message templates Meta has signed off, which runs on Meta’s timetable. Telegram asks for none of it: a bot made through BotFather works the moment HiQBot registers its webhook, so teams often connect Telegram first just to see what the agent does with real questions before rolling out a channel with more setup.
Nothing about the agent changes for Telegram. It is the same one answering your website chat and WhatsApp, reading the same documents, and it takes the booking, prices the cart or opens the ticket exactly as it would on any other channel, then hands the conversation to a person when it should.
HiQBot is a conversational platform for customer service, with AI agents and live chat on website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and LINE.
Message @BotFather inside Telegram, pick a name and a username, and it hands you a token in about a minute.
One field in channel setup. HiQBot checks it, registers the webhook, and the bot starts answering, no review and no waiting.
Upload the documents or catalogue your team already answers from. It replies out of those from the first message.
Set what the agent handles alone, what it should book or sell, and what goes straight to your team.
The same four things it does on every channel, read from your own documents rather than a fixed script.
Upload your catalogue, policies and FAQs and the agent answers out of those. Where the answer is not in them it says so and offers a person, rather than guessing one.
It asks what your trade asks, one question at a time, and marks the contact hot, warm or cold as the chat gives it something to go on.
With a WooCommerce store connected, it can price a cart and send the checkout link in the chat. For other trades, it books an appointment, demo or reservation instead.
When a question needs judgement, or the customer asks for a person, the whole thread goes to whoever is on shift. Nothing gets retyped.
See how qualifying works across every industry HiQBot covers, how a WooCommerce store gets a checkout link inside the chat, how the AI helpdesk turns a problem into a ticket your team can act on, and how live chat hands a thread to a person without the customer repeating anything.
Telegram carries more than typed text, and most of it reaches the agent. A photo, a video or a document arrives with its caption attached, so a customer can send a picture of a product and ask about it in the same message. A location pin or a shared contact card comes through as a short description the agent can read and reply to as well.
A voice note or a video note has no caption for the agent to read, so it is saved to the conversation for your team to open rather than answered automatically. Tapping an inline button on an earlier message is read the same way as typing a reply, so the yes or no buttons Telegram itself supports fit straight into the conversation.
Telegram’s own usage figures by country are not published, but it is widely reported to be one of the most used chat apps in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, with a large following across the Middle East, Central and South Asia, including Iran and Uzbekistan, and in Indonesia. If customers in any of those places message you at all, there is a good chance Telegram is already on their phone, rather than an app you are asking them to install.
It also costs nothing extra to run. The Telegram Bot API does not charge per message the way WhatsApp’s API does, so a busy Telegram channel adds no per-message bill on top of HiQBot, only the usual cost of the AI replies it sends.
A customer who messages your Telegram bot on Monday and writes on WhatsApp on Friday is one contact, not two. Every channel keeps its own thread, with the same documents behind all of them, in one inbox your team actually works from.
See the full breakdown of what each of the six channels covers.
The Voltline Store conversation above is one shape this takes. An online shop connects WooCommerce and the agent prices a cart and sends the checkout link. A clinic, a dealership or an agency connects a calendar instead, and the same agent books the appointment or the demo rather than a sale. See how HiQBot is tuned for online stores and for every other industry it covers, from automotive and hospitality to travel and SaaS.
Connecting the bot itself takes minutes. Getting it fully useful takes these four steps, and none of them touch code.
Tells the agent what to expect, a catalogue and checkout, or bookings and tickets, rather than guessing at your trade.
Product details, prices, policies and delivery times. The agent answers only from what you upload here.
Checkout links once WooCommerce is connected, bookings, or just answers and support tickets. Your call, per channel.
Website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and LINE, from the same dashboard, answering from the same documents.
A delivery problem, a complaint or anything the agent should not guess at becomes a request for your team, with what happened and a contact already attached, and the customer gets a reference number to check back with.
Add a live chat seat and whoever is on shift can pick up the same Telegram thread, with everything said so far already in front of them. How handoff and live chat work
Groups, supergroups and broadcast channels. HiQBot answers private one to one chats with your bot and ignores the rest. A community needing moderation is better served by a tool built for that.
Mass messages. Sending the same message to a list is a WhatsApp broadcast feature here, not a Telegram one.
Mini apps, payments and games. Telegram supports them inside its own app; HiQBot does not build on them.
Phone or voice calls. The agent works in writing. A callback request still goes to a person on your team to dial.
Any business whose customers already write in chat: online stores, clinics, salons, dealerships, agencies and travel operators among them. If your documents can answer a question, the agent can too, on Telegram and on every other channel you connect.
No. BotFather creates the bot from your existing personal Telegram account, but the bot becomes its own separate identity with its own username. Customers message the bot directly and never see or need your personal account.
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A Telegram chatbot is an account made through Telegram’s own BotFather tool that customers message like a person. On HiQBot it is the same AI agent that runs your other channels: it answers from documents you upload, qualifies what someone wants, sends a checkout link or books a next step, and brings in a person when it should.
No. BotFather hands you a token after a couple of messages inside Telegram, and you paste that token into one field in the HiQBot dashboard. There is no server to run and no code to deploy for the bot itself.
No. A bot made through BotFather works the moment HiQBot registers its webhook, typically within a minute of pasting the token. WhatsApp needs a verified business and Meta-approved message templates; Telegram asks for neither.
Nothing from Telegram. The Bot API does not charge per message the way WhatsApp’s API does, so Telegram adds no message fees on top of HiQBot. That makes Telegram one of the cheaper channels here to run at volume.
Text, photos, documents, voice notes and location pins all reach the agent, and it can read captions on images and files. Inline button taps are read the same way a typed reply is. It replies in text, since Telegram chats here do not carry product cards or a checkout button inside the bubble.
No. HiQBot answers private one-to-one chats with your bot only; group, supergroup and broadcast channel messages are ignored. A large public community is better served by a moderation-focused tool, and we would rather say that now than after setup.
Yes, once a WooCommerce store is connected. The agent prices the items, confirms the order with the customer, then adds the store’s own checkout link to its reply as text. Opening it lands them on your real checkout; nothing is charged in the chat itself.
Yes. Add a live chat seat and whoever is on shift can pick up any Telegram thread, with the full conversation already in front of them. The customer keeps typing in the same chat and never notices the handover happened in your dashboard, not theirs.
No. BotFather creates the bot from your existing personal Telegram account, but the bot becomes its own separate identity with its own username. Customers message the bot directly; they never see or need your personal account.
It is the channel you can have answering this afternoon, and the agent you set up here is the one that will run WhatsApp and your website when you are ready.