Guides

A chatbot for your online store in Telegram and Viber: what it does and how to connect it

A bot that answers from your catalog: a menu, product cards, calls, orders into your CRM and automatic follow-ups. Everything Looma does in Telegram and Viber, with real screens.

Looma Team 11 min read

Saturday, 11:10 PM. A shopper scrolls your Instagram, spots a water bottle and messages your store's Telegram bot: "Do you have this one in 1 liter?" Your team is asleep. A typical bot replies "Thanks, we'll get back to you" — and the shopper keeps looking elsewhere. A bot that knows your catalog sends a product card with a photo and price, an "Order" button, and offers a call if talking is easier.

Shoppers stopped emailing stores a long time ago — they message them. In Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe that means Telegram and Viber first. Below is everything the Looma bot does in these messengers, from the menu and product cards to calls and automatic follow-ups, with real screens from the dashboard.

What the Looma bot does in Telegram and Viber

AI assistant or direct chat

When you connect a bot, you choose who answers. You can change the mode at any time in the channel settings.

• AI assistant. The bot is linked to your website and answers from its catalog and AI settings. When a person is needed — the customer asks for one or the question is tricky — the AI hands the chat to your team. Outside working hours the customer is told exactly that: "We're outside working hours right now — we'll reply as soon as we're back."
• Direct chat. No AI: every message goes straight to your team. The bot answers the first message automatically — "An agent will reply shortly" during working hours, "Our agents are currently offline" outside them. You pick the bot's language (English, Ukrainian or Russian).

There's a middle ground too: if your site works in "an operator answers first" mode, turn on "AI answers after hours". Your team replies during the day, and the AI handles nights and weekends.

More on every mode and when to pick which — in the guide "Looma chat modes".

The buttons customers see in the bot

You build the menu in the channel settings, on the "Bot menu" tab. Every button is off until you turn it on, and the preview on the right shows what the customer will see.

• "Call us" — the customer calls you straight from the bot, with no phone number. The button appears when someone on your team takes calls (or the AI answers them).
• "Talk to a person" — moves the chat from the AI to your team. Available in AI assistant mode only.
• "Call me back" — the bot asks for a phone number, and the request appears in the chat and in "Leads".
• Up to three link buttons of your own — for example, "Delivery & payment", "Deals" or "Our Instagram".

Drag the buttons to reorder them, rename them and pick their colors.

How Telegram and Viber differ

• In Telegram the menu buttons appear under the input field at the start of a conversation (or after a day of silence) and go away with the bot's next reply. They're always available in the "Menu" button next to the input field as bot commands, and typing "menu" brings the buttons back. Telegram shows only three button colors: blue, green and red.
• In Viber the menu is a keyboard of buttons, with all seven colors. It appears at the start of a conversation or when the customer types "menu": a permanent keyboard covered the input field on iPhone, so we show it only when it's needed.

Product cards right in the messenger

When the AI finds products, the customer gets cards, not a list of names:

• In Telegram — the product photo, title, price and "Open on site", "Tell me more" and "Order" buttons.
• In Viber — a large card: the photo and title open the product on your site, with "Tell me more", "Open on site" and a blue "Order" button below.

"Tell me more" has the AI describe the product in more detail. "Show more" loads the next products from the same search. You set how many products to show at once in the channel settings. The "Order" button appears when order collection is on or someone on your team is online.

Every click from a card to your site goes through a Looma tracking link: clicks from the bot are counted, and you can see which products customers opened.

See which page brought the customer to the bot

When a customer taps the Telegram or Viber button in the widget on your site, Looma links their messenger chat to the website visit. Your team sees in the customer card:

• the page they opened the bot from and the landing page;
• where they came to your site from, and the campaign's UTM tags;
• country, city and device;
• the products and pages they viewed.

So the agent knows right away which product the question is about and which ad brought the customer — even if they just wrote "is this one in stock?".

Calls straight from the bot

Some customers would rather talk than type. Looma covers three cases:

• The customer calls. "Call us" in the menu gives them a personal call link: the page opens inside the messenger and the call runs in the browser — no phone number, free for the customer.
• Your agent offers a call. The chat has an "Offer a call" button: the customer gets an invitation in the bot with "Accept" and "Decline" buttons. Decline twice in a row, and the bot won't invite them again for a day.
• "Call me back". The bot asks for a number and offers to share it in one tap with a "Share my number" button — or the customer can just type it. A note appears in the chat, a request in "Leads" (and in your CRM), your team gets notified, and the customer gets a confirmation with the number.

Calls can be answered not only by your team but also by an AI voice. How it works and what it costs — in "Website calls with no phone number — and an AI that picks up".

Photos, documents, voice messages

• Search by photo. The customer sends a photo, and the AI looks for a similar product in your catalog. If the photo isn't a product (a receipt, a document, a photo of a defect), it goes to your team.
• Files. Telegram accepts photos, documents, videos, video notes, GIFs, voice and audio; Viber accepts pictures, videos, files and stickers. Your team sees them in the chat and can reply with files.
• Voice messages reach your team as audio to play in the chat.

Orders from the bot land in "Leads" and in your CRM

The customer taps "Order" under a product, and the AI collects the contact details you set up for order collection (name, phone, address and so on). The request appears in "Leads" right away, with the product and the channel it came from. If a CRM is connected, the lead goes there automatically: KeyCRM, SalesDrive, KeepinCRM or any service through Zapier.

The bot brings customers back on its own

Two automations work right in the messengers, each turned on with one switch in "Automations":

• "Customer follow-up". The customer got the AI's answer and went quiet, with no order yet? The AI writes to them once more — after about 30 minutes, 4 hours and a day of silence. It never writes at night in the customer's time zone, and you choose how many follow-ups to send (one to three). If writing again would be out of place, the AI may skip the follow-up.
• "Product reminder". A few days later (one day by default), a customer who came to the bot from your site gets one message with the products they viewed — up to three, in-stock only. One reminder per chat, and none if they already placed an order. Telegram and Viber only: Facebook and Instagram don't allow such messages.

How your team works with bot chats

• Every conversation from Telegram and Viber is in one "Chats" section together with the website, Facebook, Instagram and email, each with its messenger icon.
• An agent can take over from the AI at any time, reply with text and files, and use quick responses.
• In Telegram a sent message can be edited or deleted within 48 hours — and it changes for the customer too.
• In Viber messages show "delivered" and "read" marks. Telegram doesn't tell bots when a message is read, so there are no such marks there.

And on reliability: Looma checks every day that your bot is still connected. If the token stops working or the bot gets connected to another service, you get an email and the channel card shows a "Reconnect" button. Paste a new token of the same bot — and every chat stays where it was.

How to connect a bot in 5 minutes

Telegram

1. Open @BotFather in Telegram, send /newbot, set the bot's name and username — and copy the token.
2. In Looma: Channels → Add channel → Telegram, choose the mode (AI assistant or direct chat) and the website.
3. Paste the token — Looma checks it and connects the bot.

Viber

1. Create a bot at partners.viber.com and copy the Auth Token from the Bot Account page.
2. In Looma: Channels → Add channel → Viber, the mode and the website.
3. Paste the token — and the bot is ready.

Then turn on the bot menu and automations, and add Telegram and Viber buttons to the widget on your site so customers can jump into the bot from a product page. Step by step with screens — in the channels documentation.

FAQ

Do I need a developer to connect the bot?

No. You create the bot in @BotFather (Telegram) or at partners.viber.com (Viber) and just paste the token into Looma. No code.

Which language does the bot reply in?

The AI replies in the customer's language. If your store has a rule like "always reply in Ukrainian", the AI follows it. In direct chat mode, auto-replies use the language you picked for the bot.

What if a customer asks for a real person?

The AI hands the chat to your team, and your agents get notified. Outside working hours the customer is told they'll get a reply as soon as the team is back.

Can I connect several bots?

Yes, each bot is a separate channel with its own settings, mode and menu. How many you can have depends on your plan.

Does the bot transcribe voice messages?

Not yet: voice messages reach your team as audio to play in the chat.

A messenger bot is your website's AI chat carried over: the same catalog, the same rules, the same leads. See how the AI answers real customers in "How an AI assistant really replies".