If we can dismiss the notion that this was simply a continuity error, and I think we can, since Steven Moffat wrote both "The Big Bang" and "The Witch's Familiar," then I think the answer has to be that the Daleks in fact never were able to say "mercy" before the conclusion of the latter episode.
If you recall, throughout this two-parter, both the Doctor and Davros remember the Time Lord as having abandoned child-Davros on Skaro ("I'm not helping you. I'm helping a little boy I abandoned on a battlefield. I think I owe him a sunrise"). It wasn't until the end of the second episode that the Doctor traveled back in time and rescued child-Davros in the hope of seeding the future killing machines with the concept of mercy, so he could clue his future self into the fact that Clara was inside the Dalek machine.
Therefore, the previous events related in "Dalek" and "The Big Bang" must have happened slightly differently before the Doctor changed the timeline, and thus the Doctor remembered them differently. What this insinuates about how the Doctor's encounter with Clara in that tunnel originally went doesn't bare thinking about.
In other words, timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly.
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