Telegram is more than just an instant messaging app. It’s a practical, fast and personal tool that can be used effectively for customer support. There are over 700 million monthly active users on telegram and increasingly, consumers want to be able to easily reach out to customer support teams using their existing and familiar chat apps.

It’s no secret that providing great customer support helps improve customer satisfaction and retention, but it can be challenging managing lots of different customer support channels to suit all your customer’s needs.

In this article, we’ll explain how to effortlessly leverage Telegram for customer support and also include a few tips to help get you started. 

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What is telegram and why would you want to provide customer support on the app?

Telegram is an instant messaging app that rivals WhatsApp and WeChat. It’s been rapidly growing in popularity and is now widely used globally by hundreds of millions of people. However, It’s not just Telegram’s widespread popularity that makes it a great customer support channel. Here are a few other reasons why you should start using Telegram for customer support:

• Telegram is private & secure with an emphasis on encryption and user privacy
• Growing consumer trend to contact companies via existing chat app vs. more conventional customer support channels such as email or phone
• Telegram allows instant two-way communication, helping teams be more responsive and also making it easier for customers to respond when they are on-the-go. This can help with customer response rates.
• Telegram has a powerful and flexible API that allows customer support teams to use sophisticated automations and AI chatbots
• Users can clearly see all their previous message history on their device instead of losing track of various email threads. 

How can you provide customer support via Telegram?

There are three main ways you can provide customer support via telegram:

1. Create a Telegram Bot (Recommended)
2. Use a public (or a private) Telegram Group
3. Use a personal Telegram Account

Let’s take a look at each option and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

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Create a Telegram Bot (Recommended)

Telegram has a powerful and flexible API, which is perfect for creating customer support tools. It’s normally the best solution for any company looking to provide efficient, secure and scalable support for their customers. 

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Advantages

• Bots are fully customizable so they can be ‘on-brand’
• Bots can send and receive messages written by humans on either end, fully use AI, or use a combination of both
• Bots are available 24/7 and can automate lots of tasks e.g. support ticket triaging and categorization
• Conversations are private between one customer and the support team
• Customers can provide feedback scores (CSAT) & you can track other customer support ticket metrics

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Disadvantages

• Creating a Telegram bot yourself can be complicated and expensive, unless you use software like Mava
• You can only have one customer within a support ticket. For some companies, particularly those servicing other companies (B2B), may need to provide group support. 

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Use a public (or private) Telegram group

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Using Telegram groups can be a great way of engaging with a community. Providing customer support in group chats, however, is really hard. Messages get lost very quickly in busy public groups and it’s almost impossible to keep track of what’s going on. Groups are great for building community and making people aware of your Telegram support bot, but as soon as a group is over a few hundred people it becomes impractical to provide customer support in one shared thread. 

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Advantages

• Great way of engaging a community and fostering peer-to-peer interaction
• All community members can engage in the conversation
• Small private groups within companies can all be involved in the support conversation

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Disadvantages

• All conversations are mixed within one long thread so it’s impossible to keep track of what’s going on
• Customers might not see your response
• No customer support metrics
• Risk of spam and malicious actors targeting your community members
• Can’t share private information

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Using a personal Telegram account

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This isn’t recommended at all. Telegram wasn’t designed as a customer support tool so doesn’t have any of the features you’d need to help manage customer support enquiries.

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Advantages

• Works well if you have very few customers (under 10)
• It’s the most personal approach, suitable to high-end concierge-type services

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Disadvantages

• It is extremely difficult to manage 
• Personal chats will be mixed in with business conversations
• Only you can access the messages, so other members of a support team won’t be able to assist 
• Information can’t easily be shared across the business and if a team member leaves the company, they take the information and contacts with them
• No ability to gather or monitor customer feedback or any other support metrics

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How can you create a Telegram Customer Support Bot?

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There’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on developing a custom  Telegram bot. You can use an existing tool such as Mava to create a powerful, no-code, Telegram customer support bot in minutes. 

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Here’s an example of the Mava’s own customer support Telegram bot in action: @Mava_TicketBot. Feel free to send us a question about Mava to test it out.

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Why is Mava a market leading Telegram customer support tool?

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Unlike other omni-channel support tools such as Zendesk or Intercom, Mava has built a Native Telegram integration from the ground up allowing for full customization. 

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• Powerful no-code workflow builder: add buttons, triage tickets, set custom categories, assign agents and more
• AI powered: upload your existing support content, websites and blog posts to Mava and let Mava’s powerful AI automatically manage support requests 24/7 in over 100 languages. If the user still needs help they can be seamlessly transferred to a member of your support team
• Mava has a powerful and secure shared team inbox to manage and respond to support tickets
• Stay organized: you can create custom views within Mava to help organize filter and manage tickets
• Powerful customer support metrics: Mava offers a full range of customer support metrics including such as customer feedback (CSAT) or ticket volumes broken down by tag or category
• Your whole team can get access to Mava to view and respond to messages in real-time

Want to support your users from more channels? Mava also natively integrates into Discord and allows you to add a Mava web chat widget to your website in seconds. 

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If you’re interested in providing customer support on Telegram you can sign up for a Free Mava account here. 

We’ve also made a quickstart Telegram integration guide here.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, efficient customer support through Telegram is a powerful way to engage with customers in real-time, provide solutions promptly, and foster strong relationships. The best way of using Telegram for customer support is to create a Telegram bot. Software such as Mava, make it simple to create a Telegram bot in minutes and allow you to leverage powerful customer support features such as AI, workflow management and customer support metrics instantly.