Telegram dedicates the entire customer’s experience towards messaging to a single central messaging panel. It is not only popular with the general public, with the emergence of Telegram for Business, this application has become more enticing due to its various features, such as Group and Channel forms, which are the two different platforms for companies to engage present and potential customers.
Private vs Public Telegram Groups
Like many other group features in messaging apps, Telegram groups are used to gather multiple accounts into a single chat room. The special thing about Telegram groups is that it can hold up to 200,000 people in a single chat room. Imagine participating in a group this big; think about the potential, especially in a business-centric way. However, managing a group of this size is a tough feat even for seasoned administrators. Hence, it is important for us to know that Telegram groups offers two different approaches for this issue: the private group and the public group.
The most obvious differences between the two are how to trace the group and who has the authority to invite others to join them. The administrator and the creator of a Private group may invite people to the group directly through their contact list or via an invite link. Meanwhile, in the Public Group, anyone in the group can invite other people to participate without the authority of an administrator or creator.
Also, you cannot find private groups by searching for it in the app whereas a public group can be found through an in-app search. Moreover, an invite link of a public group can be personalized to make it attractive for people to join in. Although both versions support link shortening, only the public version allows the invite link to be customized.
When To Use Telegram Group
Internally, private groups are more suitable for families, members of projects, teams or work-related groups whereas the public group is suitable to engage customers and end-users as they are easily traced and makes gathering feedback and responses easier. This way, you can adjust your products to match user needs. The end result is increased customer engagement and experience.
You can use both private and public Telegram groups to connect with customers, specific targets with closed groups and mass targets with public groups. By doing so, your agents can also participate in the same group, filling each others’ shortcomings or absences. The feature to organize email addresses, links and documents are also beneficial tools for your agents to deliver better experiences for customers.
What Can We Do to Manage a Telegram Group
Not only is it capable to accommodate up to 200,000 people in a single group, Telegram also offers various other features to manage the group. To make it easy to understand, let’s divide it into four categories of features, consisting of:
Member Acquisition
You can do it in two different ways. First, invite from your contact list those who are suitable participants for a closed group such as your family and friends. Second is by sharing a link that directly invites people to the group.
Administration
Most messaging platforms face the same problem regarding chat history. New members are unable to access chats in the past that are probably crucial for them. However, Telegram groups are equipped with an option for new members to be allowed to see the previous chats or not.
As a Telegram group can contain as many as 200,000 people, a capable administrator is non-negotiable. Fortunately, Telegram has already prepared the right tools to handle this situation.
Telegram, like many other messaging apps, has also built in a feature that enables users to search a specific text, pin a message, and differentiate shared media to their liking.
Mute Features
Telegram also comes with a mute option to block the notifications of new messages coming from the group from showing up on your phone.
To Go Private or Public?
Telegram channel is not like any other social media feature. It is unique it is hard to find specific cases that are similar to it. The most appropriate representation is that Telegram channels run like a blog, or a live-blog, to be precise. The simplest example is when you encounter a sudden event in the city and you want to share a thought, picture, or videos about what’s happening in real-time; you can simply post it on a Telegram channel for concerned participants to view.
Telegram channel can achieve what Telegram groups may not, which is, to send messages on a large scale. Another speciality is that the administrator and creator of the channel can send their messages to the subscribers. This makes Telegram one of the few platforms that is able to provide mass broadcasts without limitations or additional fees. Unfortunately, the broadcasts can only be sent to the subscribers, not the contacts who are not subscribed to your channel yet.
Much alike Telegram groups, Telegram channels also has public and private version and shares similar differences with Telegram groups. For private channels, you can only join by inviting people; there are no other means to get in beside that. However, for public channels, people can search for the channel through the app. They are visible for anyone search for based on topics and interest.
Managing Telegram Channels
Using Telegram channels can be a great boon for the marketing efforts of businesses. The most obvious stimulus is the possibility to engage customers in a massive and extensive way, such as broadcasting about the latest offer to hundreds or thousands of people. While Telegram groups are suitable to engage a focused target, Telegram Channel can act as a host of marketing campaigns towards a larger and broader range of people.
While Telegram groups can only maintain up to 200,000 people in a single group, Telegram Channel can host an unlimited amount of subscribers. Creating and managing Telegram channels is easy and works the same way as its counterpart Telegram groups. We can separate the management of Telegram channels into the following categories:
Member Acquisitions
There are also two main ways to gather subscribers for your Telegram Channel which is by inviting them personally via a contact list or by broadcasting an invite link.
Administration
Being multi-purpose and capable of handling unlimited subscribers also means that good and capable administrators are needed. Very much like Telegram groups, you can also edit the authority of the channel’s administrator.
The difference between Telegram channels and groups lies in the Admin Signature. Through this system, subscribers can identify which administrator is sending a particular set of messages. This feature is also complemented by a viewership counter, a useful tool in Telegram channels that enables you to calculate how many of your messages or posts have been viewed.
Another feature that Telegram group doesn’t have is “Recent Action”. This feature will enable the administrator to track what other administrators have done or are doing for the last 48 hours.
Organizational Features
The other functions such as search, pin messages, share media, and mute notifications are the same as with using Telegram groups.
Comparing Telegram Channels with Groups
The features built in Telegram are able to boost the relationship between businesses and their customers. So why Telegram channels and not groups? Actually, both of them have their own uses and purposes. Telegram channel is more suitable for SaaS company, using it for power users. It is lightweight enough with the capability to share recent information, such as products, thoughts, services and updated features. There is no need for a blog or website publication. Just a Telegram Channel suffices.
The difference between Telegram channels and groups or any other features in messaging apps is the fact that you can chat with people on a large-scale by subscribing to your channel. No, you don’t need a Telegram API at all to do this, just the app will be enough. True, it is similar to other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, LINE, WeChat, but they have limitations and restrictions that hinder broadcasting of messages. However, you can do this via Telegram without additional fees or restrictions.
All in all, Telegram groups and channels have their own benefits and limitations, and their usage depends on suitability with business’ priorities. However, to manage such a large number of members and subscribers is nowhere near easy. Let alone Telegram group with 200,000 people, the unlimited potential of subscribers in Telegram channels cannot be maintained with a handful of admins; businesses need more than that and a free Telegram API is not the right solution. Multichannel systems is.
Multichannel systems allow multiple messaging platforms to be managed in a single dashboard. This way, it can be operated by hundreds of administrators. Not only that, if it is something like the Qiscus Multichannel Chat, then the integration of chatbots is within reach. Reducing the need for human agents as well as delivering 24/7 customer service, chatbots are evolving to provide better experiences to our customers. The ability to connect to another platform such as Facebook Messenger, LINE, and Whatsapp will leave us and our customers waiting eagerly for an alternative to Telegram.