Personally, I do two things when requesting an upgrade-
(1) I don't get into the details of who is or isn't flying with whom. "Please look at the record ABCDEF for Mrs XYZ"
(2) I refer to them as "Executive Platinum VIP upgrades" - while it is tedious and pretentious, it makes very clear to them what kind of instrument I expect them to use. "SWU" seems like it was misinterpreted in your case as "sticker."
Finally, if an upgrade is waitlisted I generally call back every few weeks (or if I'm calling about a different itinerary) to check on its status.