Social & messaging
In Nepal most social traffic arrives on Instagram and Facebook, and it behaves differently from WhatsApp: lower volume, far more visible. A question left unanswered in a DM is usually also a question the customer will ask publicly. Connecting these means the same team, with the same history, answers them from the same queue.
Direct messages and story replies from your Instagram business profile.
Worth having ready: an Instagram professional account (business or creator), linked to a Facebook page, and admin access to both.
To connect: go to Channels → Add channel → Instagram, sign in with the Facebook account that manages the profile, and grant the messaging permissions. Choose the Instagram account and finish.
Worth knowing: Instagram gives you a limited window to reply to a message before you need a special permission to continue. Story replies arrive with the story attached, so agents can see what the customer was reacting to. Comments on posts are not messages and do not arrive in the inbox.
Facebook Messenger
Messages sent to your Facebook page.
Worth having ready: admin access to the page and a Facebook account to authorise with.
To connect: go to Channels → Add channel → Facebook, sign in, and pick the page. Tola completes the connection for you.
Worth knowing: Facebook's standard messaging window is 24 hours from the customer's last message. Outside it, you need a message tag that fits a permitted use case, or the customer has to write again.
Telegram
A Telegram bot that feeds the shared inbox.
Worth having ready: a bot token from @BotFather.
To connect: message BotFather, run /newbot, follow the prompts, and copy the token it gives you. In Tola, go to Channels → Add channel → Telegram and paste it.
Worth knowing: Telegram has no messaging window — you can reply whenever. Customers must start the conversation by messaging the bot; you cannot message a Telegram user first.
TikTok
Direct messages from a TikTok business account.
Worth having ready: a TikTok Business account with messaging enabled.
To connect: go to Channels → Add channel → TikTok and authorise Tola against the account.
LINE
For markets where LINE is the default messenger.
Worth having ready: a LINE Official Account, and someone with access to the LINE developer console to generate the connection details.
To connect: supply the LINE channel identifier, secret and access token in Tola. Tola then gives you an address to paste back into the LINE console, which completes the link in both directions.
SMS
Plain text messaging, for reaching people who do not use anything else — and for one-time codes and delivery notifications.
How it works here: Tola sends and receives SMS over NTC and Ncell. Tell us which operator you want to use and whether you have a number already; we arrange the connection with you.
Worth knowing: SMS has no formatting, no attachments and no read receipts, and it costs per message. Treat it as a notification channel that happens to be two-way — order updates, delivery notices, one-time codes — rather than as a place to hold a conversation. For anything longer, WhatsApp costs less and reads better.
X (Twitter)
Direct messages and mentions from your X profile.
Worth having ready: an X developer account with messaging access, and its credentials.
Worth knowing: X has changed what its different access tiers allow, and what they cost, several times. Confirm your current plan still permits direct message access before building a support process around it.
What to expect from social
Three things are consistently true across these channels and are worth setting expectations about internally:
Messaging windows are the norm. Most platforms let you reply freely for a period after the customer writes, then restrict you. This is a platform rule, not a Tola limitation, and it cannot be worked around.
Feature support is uneven. Attachments, reactions, replies-to-a-specific-message and typing indicators exist on some channels and not others. A macro that works beautifully on WhatsApp may land as plain text elsewhere.
Identity is per-platform. An Instagram handle and an email address are different identities. Tola can hold both against one contact, but only once you or a workflow connect them — usually when the customer supplies an email or phone number in the conversation.