Guides

Connecting customers to your assistant

Tephlo supports WhatsApp Business, Telegram and an embeddable web widget. All three answer from the same knowledge base and land in the same escalation queue.

The three channels

A channel is how a customer reaches you. Every workspace can run more than one, and the assistant behaves identically across all of them — same knowledge, same limits, same handoff, same queue. What differs is the credentials each one needs and what the underlying platform allows.

  • WhatsApp Business — your own number, connected through Meta.
  • Telegram — your own bot, connected with a token from BotFather.
  • Web chat — a widget on your own website, with no external account at all.

Shared sandbox vs your own credentials

Before you connect anything, your workspace can already be reached on the platform’s shared sandbox channels. Customers send a short routing command — your routing tag — and the shared bot routes the conversation to your workspace. That is what the console’s Share page builds its links and QR codes from.

 Shared sandboxYour own channel
Setup neededA routing tagProvider credentials, verified
Number or bot shown to customersThe platform’sYours
Customer must send a routing command firstYesNo
Answers from your knowledge baseYesYes
Escalates into your queueYesYes
Intended forTrials, demos, internal testingProduction

Everything you configure — knowledge, goals, never-say phrases, escalation recipients — applies to both. Moving from the sandbox to your own number changes who the message comes from, not how the assistant behaves.

WhatsApp Business

Connect your number in Settings → Owned channels. The wizard asks for the credentials Meta issues for your WhatsApp Business Account: the phone number ID, the WhatsApp Business Account ID, and an access token. Secrets are stored encrypted and are only ever shown back to you masked.

Verification comes before enablement, always. Tephlo completes the webhook handshake with Meta — answering the challenge and validating the request signature — and only then can the channel be turned on. There is no path that puts a channel live on unproven credentials. If a later verification fails, the channel is disabled rather than accepting messages it cannot answer.

Each channel row shows its current health, lets you re-run the provider check on demand, and keeps an audit history of every credential and configuration change — who changed what, when, and the reason they gave for disconnecting.

WhatsApp’s 24-hour service window is the platform’s rule, not ours. Outside it, WhatsApp does not permit a free-form message, so any message the assistant would send — including a check-back on a waiting escalation — is re-checked against the window at send time and simply not sent if the window has closed.

Telegram

Create a bot with BotFather, then paste the token into the same channel wizard. Tephlo derives the bot identity from the token itself and starts receiving updates, so there is nothing else to type. Verification and auto-disable work exactly as they do for WhatsApp.

Telegram has no 24-hour window, so a workspace on Telegram can be followed up in cases where a WhatsApp conversation cannot.

The web chat widget

The same assistant on your own site, from a one-line snippet in Settings → Web chat widget. No Meta account, no bot token.

  1. Add your allowed origins. Only the exact origins you list may embed the chat frame — https://your-site.com, or http://localhost:3000 while you are developing. The widget cannot be enabled until at least one origin exists, which is what stops an embed key from working on somebody else’s site.
  2. Enable the widget and copy the snippet. Set an accent colour if you want it to match your site.
  3. Paste the snippet into your page template.

If the embed key is ever exposed, regenerate it from the same screen and paste the updated snippet — the old key stops working immediately, so plan the swap.

Routing tag and directory visibility

Two settings decide who can reach you and how.

Routing tagThe short handle that identifies your workspace on shared channels. It becomes the pre-filled command in every share link and QR code. Without one, the Share page has nothing to build links from.
Directory visibilityControls who can discover you and start a conversation. A private workspace has its share links suppressed entirely — customers must be invited rather than finding you — which is the right setting for an internal pilot.
Welcome messageThe first thing a new customer sees. It is worth writing properly: it is where you set expectations about what the assistant can and cannot help with.

What arrives on a channel

Customers do not only send text. Each message type has a defined behaviour, and none of them is silence.

TextThe ordinary path — answered from your knowledge base and catalog.
A location pinAnswered with your nearest configured branch, store or pickup point, from the locations you maintain in Settings. If you have configured none, it is acknowledged honestly instead.
A contact cardAcknowledged safely. Nothing in the card is saved, and nobody in it is contacted automatically.
Voice notes, images and documents Rolling outUnderstanding media is switched off by default and enabled per deployment. Until it is on for you, a customer who sends one gets a polite note in their own language offering a person — never a dropped message and never a guess about what the file said.

Rapid consecutive messages from one customer can be aggregated into a single turn, so somebody typing three short lines gets one considered answer rather than three overlapping ones.