All you need to know about Salesforce Telegram integration

Hello fellow Salesforce users, do your customers prefer Telegram over other messaging applications? Wonder if Telegram is suitable for business purposes? This article helps you discover Telegram's advantages for businesses and how you can automate business operations with Salesforce integration services.

Telegram reported 700 million monthly active users in November 2022.

Why you should consider Salesforce Telegram integration

First, here are five main reasons Telegram is excellent for business communication.

1. Telegram allows multiple sessions

With one Telegram account, you can use the app on as many devices as you like. All conversations will be updated in real time across all devices. Within the app, your staff can work together, communicate, and carry out a variety of administrative tasks.

2. Customers can find you on Telegram even if they don’t have your number

Telegram username features let you contact anyone without their phone number. Customers can find you by searching your username and vice versa. An even better option for businesses is to make a public channel with relevant keywords (such as "beauty salon") in the channel name and description. This way, people who are looking for a group related to your business type (e.g.:beauty services) could find and join your channel easily.

Telegram Channels are like WhatsApp Groups, but only admins can send messages. It can accommodate an unlimited number of members.

3. Telegram provides unlimited server storage

Forget about making and restoring backups. Your data (including texts, photos, and other media files) will be safely stored in the Telegram cloud. Also, you can share files up to 2 GB in size (The maximum file size on WhatsApp is 100MB). Sharing product catalog, video demos and PDF files is easy. If you'd like to send them without compression and keep the quality, you can do that.

75% of Telegram users say they get most of their news from the app.

4. Telegram has no messaging fees and limits

Unlike WhatsApp and LINE, Telegram does not impose any fees on bulk messaging. It also does not impose any restrictions on content type or messaging time limit. That means no need to collect customer opt-ins. At any time, you can re-engage a customer and send them alerts, reminders, and follow-ups.

5. Telegram offers free API for developers

Telegram offers a free API (known as the Telegram Bot) for developers to create programs that provide integrations and automation that businesses can use in chats. You can set up a Telegram bot using Telegram’s bot builder, Botfather. It offers many possibilities for developers, for example:

• Create a chatbot to pre-qualify leads or provide basic-level support for customer service

• Receive payment through popular payment providers like Apple Pay and Google Pay

• Automate a chat flow to welcome, assist, sell to a customer and notify agents about updates

• Integrate with CRM and ERP software to allow agents to access and gather customer data in Telegram, e.g.: Salesforce integration solutions

How to connect Telegram to a Salesforce integration software

The Telegram bot lacks an interface. If you wish to save developer resources, consider connecting the API to software that provides messaging, integration, and automation services to achieve the above goals. There are only a few Salesforce integration software that provides omnichannel messaging services. SleekFlow is one of them.

SleekFlow’s code-free Salesforce integration services are suitable for every business type and size.

To use our Salesforce integration solutions, you must first connect your Telegram account to SleekFlow:

1. Log in to your Telegram account

2. Go to Contacts, search @BotFather

3. Press "Start" to create a Telegram bot

4. Type in /newbot to send a command.

5. Type in your desired name for your bot.

6. Type in a username for your bot.

7. Copy the Bot Token

8. Navigate to SleekFlow Channels > Add Channels

9. Click "Add" next to Telegram.

10. Name the Channel and paste the Bot Token.

11. Your bot is connected to SleekFlow! Copy the link or save the QR code of your account below and share it with any Telegram user to start a conversation directly with you.

And then, connect your Salesforce account to SleekFlow:

1. Go to ‘Channels’

2. Click on the ‘Add’ button next to ‘Salesforce'

3. Select ‘Connect to Salesforce’

4. Map Salesforce properties to SleekFlow

5. Sync SleekFlow properties to Salesforce

6. Map Salesforce accounts to SleekFlow

7. Filter and import Salesforce contact

8. Complete the contact sync

9. When you finish the above steps, you will be able to see Salesforce contacts information, including the lead source, the lead status, the account owner, the opportunities stage, and the opportunities’ close date. Start sending them Telegram messages via the SleekFlow inbox!

Salesforce integration services - why you might need one?

It’s possible to send and receive Telegram messages to Salesforce contacts without using a Salesforce integration software. You would need a Salesforce solution engineer to set up webhook services in Salesforce to create or update the contact information based on the user event on Telegram. You would also need to create a custom Lightning component in Salesforce to provide an interface for sending and receiving messages.

Every organization has different automation processes in place to keep customers informed. For example, an e-commerce company may have automation to send shipping notifications or credit confirmations to customers. To create custom event notifications, you must use the Lightning Process builder.

On the other hand, a Salesforce integration software like SleekFlow offers no-code solutions for Salesforce Telegram integration.

It is more user-friendly for everyday business users. We have implemented various Salesforce integration solutions to help your sales and marketing team to push messages to Salesforce leads, as well as create automation to send opportunity updates to the account owner. See how B2B and B2C businesses use our Salesforce integration services to route leads and broadcast messages in the video below.

How to use Salesforce Telegram integration for business

Imagine you are a retail car dealer and have 20 sales representatives in the company. The Salesforce Telegram integration ensures equal lead distribution and timely follow-up process. You can use Telegram for marketing, sales, and customer support while making sure the sales process is tracked on Salesforce.

The table below illustrates a customer journey powered by SleekFlow’s Salesforce Telegram integration.