Telegram has long allowed developers to create bots and mini-apps, tools that have been widely used by companies. Starting today, however, anyone will be able to turn their Telegram account into a business account and gain access to business features, such as opening hours, location, quick replies, automated messages, personalized intros, chatbot support, and more. These “business” features are available for free to Premium subscribers, with more to come in future updates.
With Telegram Business, you can customize the home page for empty chats by choosing the text and sticker that people see before starting a conversation. In this way, it will be possible to show information about products and services, or welcome customers with corporate graphics.
Telegram Business also allows you to create quick replies, shortcuts for sending preset messages that can contain multiple messages and support text formatting, links, stickers, media, and files. Quick replies help you quickly send the information that customers often need.
“Typing / in the message bar brings up a panel with all quick replies, which can be sent or edited with a single tap. This only works in private chats, not in groups.”
For added automation, you can also set up a welcome message to be sent to users who contact a business account for the first time. This way, users will receive an immediate response with important information.
The welcome message can also include answers to frequently asked questions or additional details about your business, and accounts can also specify a period after which a new message received will cause the welcome message to be sent again.
Among other possibilities, you can set away messages to be sent when the business is closed or during a holiday period, also excluding specific chats or entire categories of chats, you can add colored labels to chats, giving them unique tags based on the chat folders they are in, and create links to chat with your business, such as a button to book a table or track an order.
When tapped, these links instantly open a chat and paste a suggested message for the user. These links can be used both inside and outside of Telegram. Each link also shows how many times it has been tapped, so you can track its performance.
Business users can connect Telegram bots that will process and respond to messages on their behalf. This allows businesses to seamlessly integrate any existing tools and workflows, or add AI assistants to manage their chats. When you add a chatbot, you can configure which chats the bot can access, for example by excluding all chats with your contacts, or by selecting only new chats.
In addition to these Business features, Telegram also announced revenue sharing with channel owners. Starting today, owners of public channels with at least 1000 subscribers can be rewarded with 50% of the revenue from ads displayed in their channels. Channel owners can withdraw their payouts at no cost, or reinvest them in Telegram ads, collectible usernames, or Premium giveaways.
