The difference between Telegram Chatbot and WhatsApp Chatbot

Chatbots are becoming more and more popular day by day for business. Now let's see why you should use Chatbot for your business.

Save time and money on customer service

On customer service for your business, Chatbots can save you a lot of time and money. Normally, most customer service questions are standard questions. And Chatbots can easily answer those standard questions automatically with predefined templates. Therefore, you don’t have to answer the question yourself — your time will be saved. And if you have a lot of customers, you don’t have to hire human employees to answer these questions from customers — your money will be saved. 

In one word, if you use Chatbot for your business, you can save most of your time and money on customer service. 

Just for custom and personalized questions, you need human employees to answer those questions.

24/7 availability

When you are asleep, some of your customers are awake. If they have a question about your business, products, or service, they can’t ask you the question because you are asleep. And if you have customers from different time zones, this issue will be raised more often.

In this case, a chatbot can come to your rescue. Since it is available 24/7, it can respond to your customer queries anytime. As a result, a customer can talk to your business whenever they want. And you can have a sound sleep without being worried about answering the queries from customers. The 24/7 availability of chatbots is one of the main benefits of chatbots.

Reply in seconds

Chatbot is 24/7 available and can handle thousands of customers at the same time. Moreover, unlike a human being, it doesn’t become tired or overworked. Therefore, a Chatbot can reply to customer queries immediately. 

Marketing of your business

A Chatbot can promote your products and service by providing information about the products and service to your customers. That is, a Chatbot can do marketing for your business. 

Sell products directly

Besides doing marketing of your business, a chatbot can directly sell your product to your customers and receive payments from customers. Moreover, a Chatbot can send abandoned cart reminders to potential customers.

Collect leads

A chatbot can collect leads from customers very easily. And some chatbots can collect real-time and authentic leads from customers in a conversational way. 

Schedule message

A chatbot can send scheduled messages to your customers. Therefore, it can send the right messages to your customers at the right time. That is, it sends the message to the customers when they really need the message.

Which messaging app you should use for Chatbot

Now we know the benefits of chatbots for business. Now the question is on which messaging platform to launch a chatbot. In this article, I will talk about both WhatsApp Chatbot and Telegram Chatbot and what they can do for your business and find out which one works best for your business.

Why Telegram Chatbot

A Telegram Chatbot can automatically converse with your customers on Telegram. On Telegram, normally, you chat with another person on Telegram. But as for a Telegram chatbot, you talk to a computer program, instead of a human being.

Privacy and security

Telegram is a free instant messaging app that gives the highest importance on speed and security. Besides, the app has a strong capacity for infrastructure and encryption. As a result, Telegram has become more protected and fast. 

By default, Telegram doesn’t use end-to-end encryption. But users can easily activate end-to-end encryption by enabling secret chats. After enabling secret chat, the user’s data is protected. Also, they can get all the benefits of end-to-end encryption. Moreover, users can prevent messages from being forwarded.

While secret chats are switched on, users can put their message in self-destruction mode. In self-destruction mode, a message or photo will disappear after a specific period of time. 

As well, Telegram users have a public “username” that ensures that privacy is protected. With the username, conversation on Telegram is possible — user’s phone number is not required. 

Huge user base

Now Telegram is one of the biggest instant messaging apps in the whole world. Telegram has 400 million active monthly users. And the app is gaining more and more popularity day by day. Every day, 1.5 million new users sign up on Telegram. 

Since many people use Telegram, you will find a lot of customers on the platform.

Highly interactive

Telegram provides a user-friendly and safe interface that enables users to send all kinds of messages, from images to polls, to make the user engagement highly interactive. 

24- hour rule doesn’t apply to Telegram Chatbot

Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, and WhatsApp have strict 24-hour rules which don't allow you to send a message after 24 hours of subscribers' last interaction. But this 24-hour rule doesn’t apply to Telegram. That is, a Telegram Chatbot can send promotional broadcasting messages to the subscribers anytime. And I think it is a great advantage of Telegram Chatbot. 

Promotional broadcasting message

Since the 24-hour rule doesn’t apply to Telegram, Telegram Chatbot can send promotional broadcasting messages to the subscribers anytime. And the promotional broadcasting messages could be sent instantly or at a scheduled time.

Well, since Telegram is an instant messaging app, the opening rate of the promotional broadcasting message is far higher than emails.

Group member number capacity

A Telegram group is a chat group of users and bots. The users and bots of the group are called members of the group. The telegram group holds a maximum of  200,000 members.

Channel subscriber capacity

Besides the group, Telegram has channels. It is a special group that can have an unlimited number of subscribers. And it makes a great option for Telegram Chatbot, sending promotional broadcasting messages to a large number of audiences.

But unlike the Telegram group, only admins and bots have the right to post messages. And all other users can only receive messages – they can’t post messages.

Multi-platform support

Telegram is available on Android, iOS, windows phones, windows pc, macOS, Linux OS, and even browsers. Unlike another instant messaging app, you can use the Telegram app on multiple devices at the same time.

Features

Telegram is the richest in terms of features among other instant messaging platforms. To create an integrated conversational experience for users, Telegram provides multiple rich UI elements.

A chatbot on Telegram can send text messages, promotional broadcasting messages, images and GIFs, Stickers, videos, and documents as well as can send other rich UI elements like quick replies, buttons, and cards. Besides these features, Telegram bots also support Commands and Inline Queries.

Easy to build Telegram chatbot

Building a Telegram Chatbot is super easy and straightforward. It only takes 4 steps.

To build a Telegram bot, first, open your Telegram App. Then in the search bar of the app, search with the ‘BotFather’ keyword. Then select the verified BotFather account.

Instantly a message with two links and a get started button called START will appear. Now you have to click on the Get Started Button called Start.

And without delay, it will send another message with a lot of options. Now click on the /newbot option to create a new bot.

Then the BotFather will ask you to choose a name for the bot. And you have to choose a name for the bot. After that, the BotFather will ask for a user name that ends with the word ‘bot’. Now you have to provide a username. Then the BotFather will check if the user name is already taken. If the username you provide is already taken, the BotFather will ask for another user name.

And if the user name is not taken, BotFather will congratulate you and send you the token to access the HTTP API. To build the bot you need the token. And the token can be used by anyone to control your bot. Therefore, you should keep your token secure and store it safely. Now copy the access token. You need the access token to build your Telegram bot.

Build Telegram bot with BotSailor

If you use BotSailor, a free Telegram bot building platform, you can easily develop a Telegram bot by dragging and dropping. Now you have to use the access token to connect your bot to BotSailor.

After connecting your bot with BotSailor, you can easily develop your bot on the flow builder of BotSailor by dragging and dropping.

Why should use Telegram Chatbot

There are a lot of reasons you should use the Telegram chatbot. Telegram app already has a huge user base and the user of the instant messaging app is increasing rapidly. Therefore, your business will get customers who are already using Telegram. A Telegram chatbot can have countless subscribers. And it can send promotional broadcasting messages to the subscribers without time-wise limitation since the 24-hour rule doesn’t apply to Telegram. And the opening rate of the promotional broadcasting message is far higher than emails. 

Telegram has rich UI features like quick replies, buttons, and cards. Therefore, Telegram Chatbot can send Template messages to the users.

Why WhatsApp chatbot

A WhatsApp Chatbot can automatically converse with your customers on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, normally, you chat with another person on WhatsApp. But as for a WhatsApp chatbot, you talk to a computer program, instead of a human being.

Security and privacy

Safety and privacy are the main fundamentals of the WhatsApp Chatbot ecosystem. And WhatsApp is free from ads and spam. And it is one of the reasons many people use WhatsApp.

On WhatsApp, by default end-to-end encryption is enabled. That is, on WhatsApp, users’ data is secure and the user can benefit from all the usual features of end-to-end encryption.

Huge user base

Over 2 billion people around the world use WhatsApp in more than 180 countries. With 2 billion users, WhatsApp is undoubtedly the number one instant messaging app in the market.  WhatsApp delivers about 100 billion messages every day. 

This massive user base gives WhatsApp bots easy access to a huge market. Therefore, business owners don’t have to request customers to install a new instant messaging app to start a conversation.

Features

A WhatsApp Chatbot can send Text messages, images, Gifs, audio, video, and files of any type. WhatsApp keeps its interface as minimal as possible. Therefore, it doesn’t support rich UI like quick replies, buttons, and cards.

Multi-platform support

WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging app. It is available on Android, ios, and web. 

WhatsApp 24-hour message rules

Since WhatsApp is free from ads and spam, it is impossible to send any message to anyone anytime with your WhatsApp chatbot. There are certain rules on sending messages you have to follow. The rules are here so that businesses can’t spam everyone on WhatsApp.

Let's see the rules

User-initiated conversation: If a user starts a conversation with your business, your business gets 24 hours to reply to that message. If a business starts a conversation with a user after the 24-hour window, you don’t have to worry about it because you won’t break any rules.

The moment a user sends a message to a WhatsApp bot, a 24-hour window will open. And in the frame of a 24-hour window, your chatbot can send any message to the user. And after the 24-hour window, your chatbot can’t send promotional broadcasting messages.

Promotional broadcasting message

A WhatsApp chatbot can only send promotional broadcasting messages while a 24-hour window is open. Otherwise, it can’t send promotional broadcasting messages.

Not Easy to launch a WhatsApp Chatbot

It is not easy to launch a WhatsApp bot. Launching a WhatsApp Chatbot needs integration with a WhatsApp API service provider like Twillo or UIB.

The process of launching a WhatsApp chatbot takes 3-4 weeks since multiple approvals are needed between your business and WhatsApp HQ.

Why should use WhatsApp bot

WhatsApp Chatbot doesn’t have rich UI features. And launching a WhatsApp chatbot is very difficult. Still, you should use the WhatsApp chatbot because WhatsApp has a huge user base. That is, your customers are already using WhatsApp. Since the users trust WhatsApp, the messaging app has a high engagement rate. Therefore, you will get a lot of back-and-forth engagement with your customers with the WhatsApp Chatbot.