Live Chat: Take Over a Telegram Bot Conversation

What the customer sees

Take an online shop. A customer taps Where is my order?, the bot asks for the order number, and then the customer says they want to return the item. That's where a person should step in.

The customer never leaves the chat. The bot says a person will reply, the customer writes their question, and the operator's answer arrives right below, in the same window. In Telegram it works the same way: the reply comes from your bot, in the chat the customer already has open.

The screenshot shows the website chat widget. It's one of the channels Live Chat covers, together with Telegram and e-mail.

What your team sees

Handed-over chats land in Live Chat, a shared inbox inside FlowCastle. Tabs split them into Mine, Unassigned and All, and each conversation is open until someone resolves it. Chats from Telegram, the website chat widget and e-mail arrive in the same inbox, so the team answers everything from one place.

The agent sees the whole story

Every message the bot sent and every answer the customer gave is already in the conversation. Your agent doesn't start with "How can I help you?" but with "I can see order 10482, you'd like a different size". Nobody asks the customer to repeat themselves. If the bot's messages don't show, turn them on with the bot icon next to Resolve — it switches them on and off.

The contact card opens from the conversation. It shows the customer's tags and the answers the bot saved, like the order number and the request type.

Answer from your phone

When the bot hands a chat over, FlowCastle sends you a Telegram message like this:

New unassigned chat in Northwind Shop Anna K. started a conversation in Northwind Shop that isn't assigned to anyone yet.

It has an Open chat button. Tap it and the conversation opens in Live Chat in your phone's browser, with the whole dialog above. Type your reply there. You answer in Live Chat, not by replying to the alert in Telegram.

If the chat was assigned to you, the message says "New assigned chat" instead.

Set it up

1. Add the handoff to your flow

Put the Start Conversation action at the end of the flow, after the bot has collected what your team needs. Send a short message just before it, so the customer knows a person is coming.

In the action's settings you can assign the chat to a team or to one agent. Both fields are optional. If you leave them empty, the chat goes to Unassigned, and everyone who turned on alerts for unassigned chats gets one.

Save the flow and deploy the bot.

2. Turn on alerts

Go to Settings → Notifications. Under Channels, click Connect Telegram, open the bot and press Start. Under Event types, turn on Unassigned chats, and New assigned chats if you assign chats to a team or agent. Each teammate does this for their own account.

When the bot takes over again

When the question is solved, click Resolve in the conversation. The handoff ends, and from the customer's next message the bot answers again.

What still reaches the bot during a handoff

While a person is handling the chat, the bot doesn't reply to normal messages. Everything the customer writes goes to Live Chat. Three things still go to the bot:

• Commands such as /start.
• Keyword triggers you set up in your flows.
• An answer to a question the bot is still waiting on. If the flow asks something after the handoff, the bot takes that answer itself.

That's why the handoff should be the last step of the flow.

Let the bot try first

You don't have to hand over every chat. A common setup: the bot answers the frequent questions itself and hands over only what it can't solve. That's how an AI support bot works. Ready-made templates for that setup are on the Telegram customer support bot page.