Sprint taps former T-Mobile executive for customer experience post

Sprint has turned to Robert Hackl, an international telecom executive who worked for T-Mobile US, to boost its transformation team.

Hackl worked for Vodafone in Germany for the last three years as commercial operations director. At Sprint, he will replace Robert L. Johnson as chief experience officer on April 1.

The Overland Park-based wireless carrier had disclosed in a government filing on Tuesday that Johnson would leave April 29.

In his new post, Hackl will be responsible for customer care and management and measurement of the Sprint promoter score and will serve as president of national sales.

Hackl worked for T-Mobile in the United States from 2010 to 2013. He was senior vice president of channel management, which Sprint described in a release as dealing with sales, efficiency, customer churn and “the overall customer experience.”

Before that, Hackl was with Deutsche Telekom Europe and chief executive officer of Tele2 Austria. Deutsche Telekom is the principal owner of T-Mobile US.

He joins a team that chief executive Marcelo Claure built in part by recruiting telecommunications executives from outside the United States. For some it was their first U.S. job.

“I am thrilled to work with a very entrepreneurial and international team that will write telecom history in the U.S.,” Hackl said in the company’s announcement. “I believe the team has made great progress with its turnaround effort, and if we stay laser focused on the customer experience we can accomplish extraordinary things.”

Claure and his team are trying to change how Sprint does business and in the process eliminate $2.5 billion in annual spending. The transformation has included about 2,500 in layoffs in recent months on top of earlier job cuts.

Claure said Johnson, who joined the company through its 2005 merger with Nextel, led an effort to produce “substantial improvements and set new performance records in customer care.”

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 10:58 AM with the headline "Sprint taps former T-Mobile executive for customer experience post."