Telegram is where many customers already talk to each other, and a bot is the only way a business can be reached there at scale: a personal account cannot be shared by a team, and a group exposes every customer to every other. A bot gives you one address (t.me/your_bot), private chats with each customer, and an API a help desk can sit on. This guide shows how to set that up in Kommio and what to expect from Telegram itself. Facts are as of 20 October 2026.

What you need

  • A Telegram account to create the bot with. The bot is yours: it belongs to that account, not to Kommio.
  • A Kommio workspace. Kommio Cloud is free, with no seat pricing, and you can create one yourself.
  • Permission to manage inboxes in that workspace (an administrator has it).

Step 1: create the bot with @BotFather

  1. In Telegram, open @BotFather and send /newbot.
  2. Choose a display name (what customers see, for example “Acme Support”) and a user name that ends in bot (for example acme_support_bot).
  3. BotFather answers with a token of the form <bot id>:<secret>, for example 123456789:AAExampleTokenOnly. Copy it. If you lose it, /token in BotFather shows it again.

Treat the token like a password: whoever holds it can speak as your bot.

Step 2: connect the bot to a Kommio inbox

  1. In Kommio, open Settings › Marketplace › Telegram › Install in this workspace (or Settings › Inboxes › Add inbox › Telegram).
  2. Paste the token and press Test connection. Kommio asks Telegram who the bot is and shows its name and @user name.
  3. Name the inbox and choose the agents who answer it.
  4. On the last step, Try it shows the bot’s t.me link and a QR code. Open it on a phone, send a message, and it arrives in the inbox.

The token is stored encrypted and never shown again. If you ever revoke it in BotFather (/revoke), paste the new one on the inbox’s page and Kommio registers the bot again. If Telegram refuses the stored token, the inbox goes into error, its page says what to do, and everyone who manages inboxes is notified.

Kommio picks how messages arrive by itself: a webhook when the server has a public https address, long polling when it does not. Either way an update is stored before Telegram is told it was received, and what customers sent while the inbox was paused arrives when you resume it.

Step 3: shape the first contact

The command menu

The bot gets a command menu (the “/” button beside Telegram’s input box) with /start, /status, /agent and /help, in English and in the workspace’s language for customers whose Telegram speaks it. These are handled as commands, never as messages to answer:

  • /status tells the customer where the conversation stands: with an agent, waiting for the next one, with a bot, or that nothing is open.
  • /agent hands a conversation that a bot, a chatbot flow or the AI agent holds to your team, through the same hand-off your assignment rules already react to.
  • /help lists the commands.

A welcome with buttons

On a customer’s first /start, the bot sends the inbox’s greeting with up to eight buttons. Set them on the inbox’s page under Welcome message and buttons. Each button does one thing: route to a team, start a chatbot flow, set the customer’s language, or add a tag. A tap is applied once, recorded on the conversation (“Chose Sales: routed to Sales”), and the buttons are removed so nothing is tapped twice.

Every link of the form https://t.me/your_bot?start=<payload> opens the chat and passes the payload (up to 64 letters, digits, _ and -). Kommio keeps it on the conversation as the attribute telegram_start, and two shapes act:

  • ref_summer-sale tags the conversation summer-sale, so a view or a report can filter by campaign.
  • order_12345 leaves a private note that the customer came from order 12345.

Put the first on ads and newsletters, the second on order pages and confirmation emails.

Step 4: let the rest of Kommio work

A Telegram conversation is a conversation like any other, so everything you set up once applies:

  • Assignment by team or inbox, round robin or by load, with skills and capacity.
  • Automation rules on events and time, and SLA policies with first-response and resolution targets by inbox and priority.
  • Chatbot flows and agent bots: a flow’s choices become inline keyboard buttons, and a tap answers the flow.
  • The AI agent, if you turn it on (on the free AI allowance or your own provider key), answers from your knowledge base and hands over to a person.
  • Satisfaction surveys: with the inbox’s survey on (off by default), a resolved conversation gets the question with faces, stars or thumbs as buttons; with comments on, the bot asks for one and the reply is recorded as the comment.
  • Reports count Telegram like every channel, with Telegram as its own slice of the channel mix and the inbox as a filter.

The customer becomes a contact with their Telegram name, user name and the language of their Telegram app. Kommio maps that language to one of its 16 and stores it where nothing is set yet, so the AI agent, rules and flows can answer in it; an agent’s value always wins.

What Telegram does and does not tell a bot

Knowing the limits of the Bot API saves a lot of confused tickets:

  • No reply window. A bot may answer at any time after the customer wrote. It can never start a chat with someone who has not.
  • No read receipts. Telegram tells bots nothing about reads. Kommio offers a quiet substitute: an emoji reaction on the customer’s newest message when an agent opens the conversation (per inbox, off by default).
  • No deletions. When a customer deletes a message in a private chat, Telegram sends no update, so the message stays in Kommio as it was.
  • Edits arrive. An edited message changes in place in the thread, marked “edited”, with the earlier text kept and shown on hover.
  • Blocked bots arrive too. When a customer blocks the bot, the thread says so and replies fail at once with that reason, until they unblock it. The listing is per inbox, so a second bot can still reach them.
  • Files. Telegram lets a bot download files up to 20 MB; Kommio stores attachments up to 25 MB. Larger files are not fetched, and the conversation says so.
  • Outbound. Replies go out formatted (bold, italic, links, code), split at 4,096 characters, photos up to 10 MB with a caption, other files as documents. Kommio paces sends to Telegram’s limits and never sends a reply twice.

When one customer floods the chat

Some customers send dozens of messages in a row. Kommio bounds that per chat: more than 30 messages in 10 minutes (the inbox can change both numbers, or turn it off) get one automatic acknowledgement in the customer’s language, then nothing more until someone on your team replies. Identical messages in a row collapse into one, shown as “sent N times”, with every occurrence’s time kept. Nothing is dropped, and Telegram is never answered with an error. Note that the acknowledgement is a reply, so it counts as a first response in reports, like any automatic reply.

Coming from Chatwoot

A Telegram inbox imported from Chatwoot arrives as read-only history with each customer’s Telegram id kept. On the inbox’s page, Connect Telegram takes the bot token; the inbox goes live, and a returning customer’s next message lands on their imported contact and history. The migration guide has the whole process.

Not supported yet

Group chats, Markdown from bots, and a “Continue in Telegram” link from the website chat are planned, not shipped. The exact behaviour of every message type is in the Telegram setup guide.

Frequently asked questions

Can a Telegram bot message a customer first?

No. Telegram lets a bot answer a person only after that person has started a chat with it. Once they have, there is no reply window: the bot can answer at any time, unlike WhatsApp's 24 hours.

Does Kommio see when a customer reads or deletes a message on Telegram?

No. The Telegram Bot API reports neither reads nor deletions in private chats to a bot, so Kommio cannot show them. An inbox can instead react with an emoji (👀 by default) to the customer's newest message when an agent opens the conversation; it is off by default.

Does it work in Telegram groups?

Not today. Kommio handles private chats with the bot. Messages in groups and channels, and the bot being added to one, are ignored and reported on the inbox's health. Group chats are planned.

Do I need a public server for the bot to receive messages?

No. With a public https address Kommio registers a webhook with Telegram; without one, for example a self-hosted install behind a firewall, it long-polls Telegram instead. Kommio Cloud uses the webhook.

What does Telegram support cost in Kommio?

Telegram bots are free from Telegram, and Kommio Cloud is free with no seat pricing under its fair-use limits. Every channel, Telegram included, is part of the same free workspace.

How do I know which campaign brought a customer to the bot?

Use a start link such as t.me/your_bot?start=ref_summer-sale. Kommio keeps the payload on the conversation and tags it summer-sale, so views and reports can filter by the campaign.

Facts on this page describe Kommio as it is on the date above; anything marked planned is on the roadmap, not shipped. Corrections to [email protected].