Sprint Nextel Corp.'s (NYSE: S) may be slicing further into its worker ranks this year, according to company CEO Dan Hesse. Hesse, who came to the top job just over a year ago, has managed to remake Sprint's marketing and has somewhat stemmed the customer defections from Sprint, although the company continues to lose customers every quarter. Still, Hesse has done many things right to get Sprint under control. He's just not completely there yet. Reducing headcount to save expenses has also been a priority for Hesse.

About a week ago, Hesse indicated that "from a profitability point of view, job one has to be about doing something about the top line and subscriber numbers ... we can take costs out and we will continue to do that, just like we did last year ... we will do more of that in 2009." In other words, look for more Sprint Nextel layoffs to be announced probably in the first quarter or in the second. The company let 4,000 workers go in 2008.

Sprint has a lot going for it. It's going to be the sole carrier for the new Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) Pre, which is being touted as the first serious competitor to Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone. The company's marketing is what I would consider first-rate and edgy -- and full of energy. It's just not gaining customers, and a recent competitive merger won't make things much easier. It has apparently improved its customer service though, which is a great sign. Now, if it could just sign up those customers by the hundreds of thousands.

Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S), the national wireless carrier that can't stop hemorrhaging customers quarter after quarter, may close up to 20 of its customer call centers starting in 2009 as it moves to aggressively cuts costs.

Sprint Chief Service Officer Bob Johnson said the cuts were caused by declining customer calls and fewer billing and service questions. This makes sense: Sprint Nextel has lost millions of customers in the last 18 months. It seems pretty natural to not need all those call center representatives if the call volume is dropping.

But that's not all. Not enough Spring employees have signed up for recently-announced buyout packages, which is forcing Sprint Nextel's hand at more layoffs beyond the 4,000 employees pink slips it gave at the start of this year. Sprint Nextel has improved its customer service -- which was the bane of its existence -- but those improvements came as the U.S. economy took a nosedive and competitor AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T) sold the heck out of the iPhone 3G at Sprint's expense.

The only thing Sprint can do is to become a leader in something, and customer service would be a great area to really make a difference in. Wireless has been and still is a commodity service, even with calling plans, coverage and data speeds being slightly different between all national carriers. The one thing that could be a big differentiator is customer service. Trying to get corporations to hear that call seems like a futile exercise in most cases, which is unfortunate.

Reporting one disastrous quarter after another in recent times, Sprint Nextel finally changed its top leadership last month, hiring telecom vet Dan Hesse. Hesse has wasted no time in starting to streamline the beleaguered company, announcing thousands of layoffs just a few weeks ago.

Then, last week came the dirty work -- canning executives that have been present during the fall of Sprint Nextel during 2007. CFO Paul Saleh -- the former interim CEO -- was booted out, as are Chief Marketing Officer Tim Kelly and Sales Chief Mark Angelino. Sprint's marketing has been the target of pundits for quite some time, even with the recently "Sprint Ahead" corporate message that seems to go over the heads of most consumers based from what I have seen. It's a great message -- but entirely too complicated for the average wireless customer to understand.

Kelly was a longtime Sprint employee, while Saleh and Angelino were Nextel veterans. Hesse is doing what Michael Dell did a year ago when he took over control of the company he founded -- bring in a ton of new blood. It's too early to see what Hesse will do to revive Sprint with a bunch of new top managers, but whatever moves he makes will surely place Sprint in better competitive position than where it rests now, at the bottom of the heap compared to wireless carrier competition.