Sprint Chief Experience Officer Johnson to leave company, will be replaced by former T-Mobile exec

Sprint (NYSE: S) Chief Experience Officer Bob Johnson will leave the company next month just 14 months after being named to the position.

Johnson

The struggling carrier said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Johnson's tenure will end April 29. A Sprint representative said she had no comment on the move.

Johnson will be replaced by Robert Hackl, who was also named president of national sales. Hackl was most recently director of commercial operations at Vodafone in Germany; he was also senior vice president of channel management at T-Mobile US from 2010 to 2013. 

Hackl will join Sprint April 1, reporting to CEO Marcelo Claure.

Claure had named Johnson to the newly created role in November 2014 as part of a flurry of front-office moves that saw Marcelo -- relatively new to his position as CEO -- put his stamp on the organization. Those moves included the departure of several longtime executives including CMO Jeff Hallock, who was briefly replaced by Kevin Crull in May 2015. In other front-office shakeup three months ago, Crull was placed in charge of Sprint's central U.S. region and Roger Solé was named CMO.

Johnson was "responsible for delivering a world-class customer experience at all customer touch-points," Claure said at the time he named Johnson to the post, expanding his role overseeing Sprint's customer care and IT groups. A 32-year veteran of the telecom industry, Johnson joined Nextel in 1998.

Sprint's fourth-quarter earnings substantially exceeded Wall Street estimates, but it still faces serious challenges. The operator continues to work to cut as much as $2.5 billion from its budget -- it slashed 2,500 jobs in January during a third round of layoffs -- and it carries more than $30 billion in debt, $2.3 billion of which comes due this year.

For more:
- see this Sprint SEC filing

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Article updated March 2 to include Sprint's hiring of Robert Hackl.