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A Telegram support bot for your small business — FAQ answered from your own files

· 3 min read
AOVA Team
AOVA Team
Building AI assistants from your own knowledge

For a small business, every unanswered message in Telegram is a customer who might go elsewhere. But most of those messages are the same dozen questions: what are your hours, how much is delivery, can I return this, do you have a slot on Saturday? A support bot that answers them from your own price list and policies takes that load off — without giving customers made-up answers.

Start from the questions, not the bot​

Before building anything, scroll through your last month of messages and write down the questions that come up most. Then check that each one is answered somewhere in writing. Typical starter set:

  • Price list or menu (PDF or spreadsheet exported to PDF).
  • Delivery, returns and payment terms.
  • Opening hours, address, how to book.
  • An FAQ — even a rough one written in 20 minutes beats nothing.

Upload these into a knowledge base. The bot answers from the passages it finds there, so the quality of these files matters more than anything else.

Set boundaries in the agent's instructions​

A good support bot knows what it shouldn't do. For example:

You are the assistant of Acme Flowers. Answer briefly and politely, only from the documents. Never promise discounts or delivery times that are not in the documents. If the customer wants to place an order or has a complaint, give them our phone +44 20 0000 0000 and working hours.

Connect Telegram​

Create a bot with @BotFather, paste its token into a Telegram channel on your agent — the full walkthrough with screenshots is in How to create an AI Telegram bot that answers from your documents.

Run it like a support team would​

  • Read the conversations weekly. They're all under Contacts. The questions the bot couldn't answer are your to-do list: add a line to the FAQ and it knows next time.
  • Update, don't rebuild. Prices changed? Re-upload the price list — the bot picks up the new version once it's processed.
  • Add the website next. The same agent can answer in a chat widget on your site, so customers get the same answers everywhere.

What it costs​

There's a free plan to try it with your own documents. After that you pay in credits for answers the bot actually gives — a typical answer on a fast model costs about 1–2 credits. Details on the pricing page.

Set up your support bot for free →