You have to call cohorts something. I know a gaming company that went very publicly out of their way to refer to the cohorts as Big Spenders, Hobbyists, etc. It didn't save their company. What you name your buckets doesn't matter.

SaaS companies call customers Users, talks about Activating and Retaining them, put them in Buckets. If this is your bar for dehumanizing then this must be a very frustrating website for you to visit.

Do you not shop at grocery stores? They put the milk and eggs in the back to psychologically manipulate you into walking past other items. And you're stored in their database as nothing but a phone number! So dehumanizing.